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UNDER THE TREES. 



UNDER THE TREES. 



BY 



SAMUEL IRENi^US PRIME. 




NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 



FRANKLIN SQUARB. 



1902 



THE !, 3'-iA«Y »F 

Tv»0 Oi r c-i i iOeiVfcO 

APR, 21 19i?2 

SO!-- J. ' 






Copyright, 1874, by Harper & Brothers. 



Copyright, J902, by Wendell Prime, Mary Prime Stoddakd, 
and Louisa Prime. 






a- 



TO 



£il2 IJrimc 



THIS VOLUME IS 



LOVINGLY INSCRIBED. 



NOTE. 

Many of these miscellaneous letters and papers were 
written out of doors, and the writer yields to the request 
of others in putting them under the cover of a book. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

I. OUR TENT PITCHED • 9 

II. THE GARDEN AND GARDENS 14 

III. THE ROSES ^9 

IV. THE BIRDS 24 

V. INSECT LIFE "3 ^ 

VI. SUNSHINE 40 

VII. SHOWERS 44 

VIII. BUGS 48 

IX. AN ARROW-HEAD .53 

X. OCTOBER 59 

XI. A friend's VISIT 63 



XII. CONVERSATION. 



68 



XIII. AUTHORS 73 



XIV. DOGS 



80 



XV. THE ADIRONDACKS 9^ 

XVI. WITH THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS. 137 

XVII. MEMORIES OF ITALY 147 

XVIII. A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE ALPS 177 

XIX. A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE DEEP I95 

XX. A parson's STORY 20I 

XXI. PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES 237 

XXII. ON LYING AND LENDING 261 

XXIII. LITTLE TRIALS 269 

XXIV. TALKING TO MAN AND .BEAST 273 

XXV. LOVING AND DOING 277 

XXVI. THE NEGLECTED GRAVEYARD 284 

XXVII. WHENCE COMFORT COMES 289 

XXVIII. MY FIRST AND LAST GREAT SERMON....- 299 

XXIX. THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER 3^4 

XXX. OUR FRIENDS IN HEAVEN 3IO 



UNDER THE TREES. 



I. 

OUR TENT PITCHED. 

It is said that fools build houses and wise men live in 
them. This is not true of the place where we have now 
set up our household gods, and in the midst of confusion 
yet feel already a sense of at-home-ativeness, never en- 
joyed more completely since the sunny days of childhood. 
For it was a wise man who chose this spot for his house, 
and here made for himself a home. His judgment, taste, 
and skill are seen all over it, and if in this changing world 
it has finally fallen into our hands, we will not call him 
unwise, but rather be glad that he was led to make it 
what it is, that it might be all the more enjoyable for us. 

It is on the banks of the Hudson. From this rustic 
seat where I am writing you might throw a stone far into 
the river. Twenty miles or more of this glorious stream, 
embracing the whole of Tappan Zee, lie in full view, and 
from the house some forty or fifty miles of river, forest, 
and mountains spread themselves continuously at our 
feet. Between five and six> acres of land, chiefly covered 
with old trees, a wild glen crossed by rustic bridges on 
the southern side of it, walks winding through the woods 



lO UNDER THE TREES. 

and in constant sight of the waters, garden and fruits and 
flowers, which for many years have been coming to their 
present condition, ornamental shade-trees, and evergreens 
arranged to give effect and beauty to the lawn and land- 
scape, are the outline features of the place. It is the 
midst of spring. The cherry-trees have been in full 
bloom, and the apples and pears are now getting to blows. 
The birds have a carnival of song all over the woods, and 
about sunrise they seem to meet for morning praise, and 
hold a concert near the house. Three pairs of them have 
built their nests in the piazzas, and are as much at home 
as any of the family. They shall have their board and 
lodging without charge, and the longer they stay, the bet- 
ter we shall like it. 

We have not been here a week, and have yet to learn 
by experience the various inconveniences which every 
place in this world has j but just now every thing is around 
us to make up the comfort and beauty of a rural home. 
It is about twenty miles from the city, and the railroad 
and steamboat take us to town or from it a dozen times 
a day, if we should wish to go so often. It is about three 
miles below the Sunnyside of Washington Irving, and in 
the midst of scores of our fellow-citizens who have found 
on the eastern bank of the Hudson River the most ele- 
gant, costly, and healthful situations for their summer res- 
idences. Every part of the Hudson River is so beautiful 
that each inhabitant of the shore and the adjacent hills 
thinks his own spot the most beautiful, and he can make 
a very good argument in support of his opinion. But the 
region that we are in, and which is in full view of the old 
arbor under the trees, has been made classic by the pen 
and the life and death of Irving, "whose placid and genial 
humor has rendered every subject and every place that 



OUR TENT PITCHED. II 

he touched immortal in the affections of his countrymen. 
This Tappan Sea was the terror of the early Dutch navi- 
gators, who made its perilous passage with more fear and 
trembling than their children feel when crossing the 
ocean. It is the widest portion of the river, being three 
or four miles. We are constantly tempted to look out 
on the ever-changing surface of the water. The steam- 
boats that pass, more than hourly, enliven and diversify 
the view. A lady sitting by me was a passenger on the 
first steamer that ever disturbed the waters of the Hud- 
son, and of course the first in the world ! What changes 
have since come over the shores and over the world ! 

Yet she is only years of age, and has seen all the 

progress of the country and the age since that experiment 
of Fulton's was made, revolutionizing the commerce and 
intercourse of mankind. 

Those who have been on the Rhine delight to speak 
of its romantic beauty, its vine-clad hillsides, its castle- 
crowned crags, and mighty fortresses. A day on the 
Rhine is a lifetime picture of beauty and grandeur. But 
it is not patriotism alone that challenges the Rhine or 
any other to compete with this tranquil river in majestic 
scenery and picturesque effects. Long may it be before 
its heights are crowned with citadels, and its people forti- 
fied against their neighbors. A few miles of the Rhine 
are exceedingly lovely, but a day's voyage on the Hudson 
furnishes far more enchanting scenery, and to a dweller on 
its banks it spreads a perpetual feast. 

And here we have pitched our tent. Strangers and 
pilgrims on the earth, as all our fathers were, it is well to 
feel that "this is not our rest." We have no continuing 
city, no abiding-place. Others have been in these beau- 
tiful groves. This rustic summer seat, falling into decay. 



12 UNDER THE TREES. 

speaks of former possessors who doubtless here sat down 
to stay, but the places that then knew them will know them 
no more. It may be so with us, even if the stream of life, 
like this bright, clear river, should flow on these many 
years. 

The current of thought has been broken by a thunder- 
sfiower that drove me to a better shelter. The sight and 
sound were another of the entertainments to which we are 
invited. For an hour or two I had been observing the 
clouds in the upper bay, and around Mount Taurn they 
were black with signs of a storm. The sun was obscured, 
but this was pleasant toward the close of a warm day. 
Presently a sharp crack of a thunderbolt and the glare 
of the lightning filled the air, and the rain came in tor- 
rents. It was short and sweet. The dark cloud pursued 
its path down the river, its footsteps in the deep ; and 
soon the sun tricked his beams and stood out in the west- 
ern sky, more lustrous than before the rain. He has just 
sunk down into a bed of golden clouds, that lie on the 
hills directly in front of us. A broad belt of sunlight 
stretches across the river; the whole western firmament 
is aglow ; the vessels that cross the track of the sunshine 
are covered with the light of it as if they had been sud- 
denly set on fire, and all nature at this evening hour 
seems to rejoice and be glad in the beauty of its fresh 
verdure, refreshed with showers. It is very still now. 
Nothing breaks in on the silence of the hour and the 
scene but the murmurs of the tree-tops, and the gentle 
wash of the water on the shore. 

" The time, how lovely and how still, 

Peace shines and smiles on all below ; 

The plain, the stream, the wood, the hill — 

All fair with evening's setting glow." 



OUR TENT PITCHED. 1 3 

It is hard to make it real that so much calmness, peace, 
and beauty can be and abound in a world with evil in it. 
It is a beautiful world ; and the true heart swells grate- 
fully to its Maker in the midst of loveliness and glory 
like this. " Every prospect pleases." The earth is going 
to rest, and soon the voices of tired nature will be silent. 
But the praise of God goes up with evening hymns from 
all the dwellers on the river-side, and from those across 
the stream, and from these crowded steamers that are 
rushing by on their journeys. Who can be thankless in 
such a world, with God all around us, and a better world 
than this to come ? 



THE GARDEN AND GARDENS. 

It is high time that the gardens were made and the 
vegetables fairly on their way toward perfection. But we 
were so late in coming into the country that we can make 
no attempt this year to have things early. 

While out before breakfast this morning among the 
roses, radishes, and cucumbers, it occurred to me that the 
first labor of our first parent, father Adam, was something 
of the same, for he was placed by his infinitely wise Cre- 
ator in a garden to dress and keep it. When he awoke 
from one of his earliest sleeps, and found by his side a 
full-blown bride, he had such a vision of beauty as his 
eyes afterward never saw in the fairest flowers that sprang 
beneath his fostering hands. And when they went to- 
gether to their morning work, in that Eden which the 
Lord made for them before he made them, they found it 
of all conceivable employments the most congenial to 
their innocence and purity. I believe in the garden of 
Eden ; the tree of knowledge of good and evil ; the tree of 
life ; the serpent : the temptation ; the fall that " brought 
death into the world, and all our woe." It is a thousand 
times harder to believe the miserable substitutes for the 
history of the Bible, than to take it as it is and admit that 
the greatest miracle was creation. After believing that 
the world was made out of nothing, it is easy enough to 
believe all the rest. 



THE GARDEN AND GARDENS. 1 5 

Out in the early morning upon the paths of nature, and 
communing with God in the works of his hands, it is sweet 
beyond expression \o feel that the same hands which fash- 
ioned the heavens, and hung out the stars, and decked the 
earth with lovehness, what time the sons of God shouted 
for joy, made the first garden, and planted the flowers and 
the fruits, watered them with the rivers of his pleasure, 
and made for his creatures a Paradise in which he him- 
self loved to walk in the cool of the day and converse 
with them, his loving children, as friend with friend. 
There was some wise design in this arrangement of his; 
and from that glad morning in which our primeval an- 
cestors began their work to the present hour, no em- 
ployment on earth has been found to combine more com- 
pletely the idea of the useful and the beautiful than this, 
from the effect of which just now I confess some aches 
and pains that are hardly in harmony with that last line. 
But we shall get used to it shortly, and then the work will 
be more like play, and leave only pleasant reminders in 
renovated health and increasing vigor. 

And since those good old times when Adam and Eve 
were alone in their glory of innocence and beauty, their 
children have in all ages spent their highest skill and 
strength in the embellishment of the garden. Among 
the wonders of the world were the hanging gardens of 
Babylon. With what a lavish hand did King Solomon 
adorn his gardens, pursuing the study and culture of 
plants till he knew them all, from the cedar of Lebanon 
to the hyssop on the wall. Yet a greater than Solomon 
has told us that in all his glory he was not arrayed like 
one of his own flowers, and that one of the most delicate 
— the lily. Ten years ago I was climbing up the hill of 
Samaria, where even now, after the rains of two thousand 



l6 UNDER THE TREES. 

years have washed its terraces, we can yet see the remains 
of magnificent beauty that once environed its slopes and 
crowned its smnmit, making it a gorgeous spectacle, prob- 
ably unsurpassed by any thing on the earth in the days 
of Herod the Great. And away on the banks of the 
Bosphorus are " the Gardens of the Blessed," where the 
daughters of the East, more beautiful than the flowers, 
may lay aside their perpetual veils, and wander and- waste 
their indolent lives. Every city of Europe that aspires to 
rank has its broad acres in public gardens for the instruc- 
tion and delight of the people, where bands of music en- 
tertain them ; and to their credit let it be said that, while 
thousands walk for hours among beds of tempting beauty, 
not one will put forth his hand to pick a flower. He feels 
that it is his where it is ; it grows and blooms there for 
his pleasure, and to pluck it would destroy his own and 
others'. This is a popular education we have not attained 
in our free and enlightened country. There is not a city 
of this land whfere the people could have free access to 
a public garden without a strict police, to see that the 
sovereigns do not steal their own property. The " Cen- 
tral Park" is by far the noblest public promenade in 
America, resorted to already by thousands daily — yet even 
here, in our great metropolis, ladies are desired not to 
carry flowers into the park in their carriages, that the 
police may be able to take it for granted that any one 
with flowers in his hands has stolen them, and is to be 
treated accordingly. Even in our rural cemeteries, where 
the flowers cover the ashes of the dead — emblems of the 
loveliness and frailty that perishes below, and emblems, 
too, of the beauty of the love that cherishes the meniory 
of the departed — even here our fair countrywomen — not to 
say the men, of course — will steal flowers. 



THE GARDEN AND GARDENS. 1 7 

In the city of Florence, the fairest city in beautiful Italy, 
the city of art and song, some of the masterpieces of the 
great masters of sculpture, such as the David of Michael 
Angelo, stand out in the open street, exposed to the haz- 
ards of accident or to wanton recklessness ; yet there for 
centuries may stand the delicate marble that a stone from 
the hand of a rude boy would mar forever, and yet it is 
safe as in the halls of the Pitti Palace itself Universal 
homage protects these memorials that genius has left for 
posterity to cherish and admire. In a httle village, the 
name of which is so obscure that I have forgotten it, the 
" Common " was a beautiful garden surrounded by nu- 
merous marble statues of poets and artists and patriots, 
evidences of the spirit and taste of the people who thus 
delighted to adorn their rural neighborhood. 

On the banks of Lake Como, in Northern Italy, there 
are hundreds of palaces, the abodes of men and women 
of wealth and genius and fame, some of them artists, 
others celebrated singers, and others whose riches have 
come down to them by inheritance, and these people or 
their predecessors have made the shores of this enchant- 
ing lake a garden, or gardens, of surpassing splendor. 
You may stop, almost at random, and be charmed with 
the scenes of loveliness that meet your eyes as soon as 
you step ashore. And instead of being warned off by a 
sign-board that "all persons are forbid trespassing on 
these grounds," you are kindly admitted through the hos- 
pitable gates, and permitted to enjoy at your leisure the 
feast of beauty that is here spread at your feet. One of 
these gardens is around a hill — a steep and high hill — 
terraced from the sole of its foot to the crown of its head ; 
and each successive terrace is adorned with flowers and 
plants in luxuriant growth, representing different climes, 

B 



1 8 UNDER THE TREES. 

SO that the visitor, as he walked around and gradually 
ascended the hill, was cheated with the illusion tha't he 
was reaching a colder and still colder region as he climbs. 
Toward the summit the hill is pierced with a tunnel 
three hundred feet long, and wide enough for a coach to 
be driven through ; the path is curved like a rainbow, and 
standing in the centre of it, you can look out both ways 
on lakes that lie on opposite sides of this remarkable 
garden hill. And this splendid spot, on which wealth is 
freely lavished with taste and toil, belongs to a gentleman 
whose duties in the army keep him almost constantly from 
home, and he rarely visits the place on which he expends 
his ancestral treasure ; but he freely allows it to be thrown 
open to travelers, who delight to carry away with them 
recollections of its beauty, and liberality of its princely 
proprietor. 

No memories of England are more delightful than those 
of her parks and gardens ; art has made castles and ca- 
thedrals and libraries, and yet art has no power to please 
like that of nature in the hands of art. We have a vivid 
idea of Westminster Abbey before seeing it, but Chats- 
worth is a world of whose existence we have no concep- 
tion till its cultivated grounds are all around us. 



III. 

THE ROSES. 

Just now there are at least a thousand, perhaps two thou- 
sand roses in full bloom in sight as I sit on an old tumble- 
down settee under a tree in the midst of the garden. They 
are of all known colors for roses, and their names are far 
beyond my attainments in the science of flowers. Beau- 
tiful exceedingly, we can repeat again and again as we 
look at them, but even as we look they are passing away. 
Beauty soon decays. And this led me off into a med- 
itative ramble on the old question of the distinction be- 
tween the useful and the beautiful, as if beauty were not 
useful, and the useful necessarily not beautiful. And it 
occurred to me that there is another question to be an- 
swered first, on the answer depending the result to which 
we shall come in looking after the comparative merits of 
cabbage-roses and cabbages. 

If we live to eat, and that is most to be desired which 
gives us food ; if we live to dress, and that is best that 
yields us clothes, we shall very soon have a standard by 
which to measure the value of every thing within our 
reach. But by so much as the inner life is more than the 
visible, and the enjoyment and advancement of the soul 
more to be desired than the lust of the flesh or the pride of 
life, so is the gratification, the cultivation, and perfection of 
the higher tastes to be esteemed of more account than those 
which man has in common with the brutes that perish. 



20 UNDER THE TREES. 

Home Tooke defined virtue to be any thing that answers 
its purpose — certainly a very low and disgusting concep- 
tion of the term. But we may say that every thing beau- 
tiful is or ought to be useful, and if it is not so, it is either 
neglected or abused. Because more than one half of the 
world go through it without a thought of the charms with 
which its face is clothed, we often fall into the mistake of 
thinking that beauty is thrown away on them, and re- 
served only for those whose eyes have been anointed by 
culture or association. But when I was in New York a 
few days ago, in a part of it where poverty alone would 
be content to dwell, and the last place in the city where 
' one would look for taste and beauty, I saw the third-story 
windows of one of the houses filled with pots of flowers, 
set out on the sills to catch the sweet influences of the 
spring-time sun, and it was pleasing to reflect that up in 
those small, unventilated rooms, where the poor women 
must spend the whole year and never once get out into 
the country to enjoy such a wealth of floral beauty as this 
sweet June unfolds, they can and will have their few pet 
flowers, on which to lavish their affectionate care, and get 
the return that beauty gives to its humblest lover. Cole- 
ridge was admiring a waterfall, and overheard a man near 
him who said " Majestic." The poet turned to him, and 
said, " That is the very word." "Yes," continued the ad- 
miring rustic, "it is jest the purtiest, majesticest thing I 
ever seed." He had the soul to admire and enjoy it, but 
rhetoric was not his forte. One of our greatest heroes 
and statesmen had been neglected in the days of his 
youth, and he never recovered from the effects of such 
neglect. Some of his words were quite as peculiar as 
Mrs. Partington's. Yet he loved flowers and had a glori- 
ous garden, in which he was walking one day with a friend 



THE ROSES. 21 

who admired its splendor, and said to him, " You have a 
fine taste for horticulture." "Oh yes," said he, "I was 
always fond of horses." 

The ox looks out on a green meadow and admires it as 
it is good for food. Is he any better than an ox who sees 
in a rose only what it will bring in market ? Beauty cer- 
tainly has higher uses than to enrich its owner. The value 
we set on a painting or a statue has no relation to the 
price it will bring, unless we are in the " picture line." I 
was looking the other day at a painting — a single portrait 
— that the owner will not sell for $10,000. Mr. Church 
painted his last Niagara, the "Under the Fall," in six 
hours, from the white canvas to the last touch. I was' 
unwilling to believe it, till he told me so himself. Mr. 
Roberts, the liberal gentleman for whom it was painted, 
gave him $1500 for it. The amount of time and labor 
expended seems to be in no proper proportion to the 
price paid ; but the possessor has value in it far beyond 
the money that he parted with to secure such a " thing of 
beauty " for himself and friends. Every body can not have 
Niagara or a Church's painting of it. When an American 
lady was visiting England a few years ago, she was asked 
"if she had seen Niagara Falls." "Oh, certainly," said 
she, " I own them." She was, indeed, one of the owners 
— Miss Porter of Niagara. But if we can not own all the 
beauty and glory in the world around us, we may enjoy it, 
and so make all the earth our own. The possession of 
it sometimes poisons the enjoyment. Lady Coventry was 
so proud of her beauty that she always sat with her mirror 
tn hand ; when sickness made ravages in her charms, she 
had her windows darkened, that the wrinkles might not 
be so palpable ; and when she grew worse, she received 
her food and medicine through the closed curtains of her 



22 UNDER THE TREES. 

couch, refusing to be seen even by her most intimate 
friends — and so she died ! This is the madness of beauty, 
of which we have another example in the case of a young 
lady who admired her own beauty so much that she could 
not believe it possible for her to die, and when she was 
wasting away with consumption, she had a mirror always 
before her that she might delight herself in the charms 
that were fading from all eyes but her own. She died 
raving mad because she must die. 

The love of beauty is not a fault. The love of being 
admired is not a fault. God himself, all holy and the 
perfection of beauty, loves to be admired in and by his 
saints. And in the ranks of all his sentient beings, how 
far down we can not say, this love reigns, a common, per- 
haps universal law of being. Some plants shrink from 
the touch, and we call them sensitive ; arid these flowers 
seem to smile in the morning sunlight as if they took de- 
light in the beauty with which the hand of God has clothed 
them. The love of the beautiful is a virtue ; it is useful 
in itself; it makes a people more gentle, refined, courte- 
ous, and happy. It is to be encouraged, stimulated, and 
developed. 

It is a good, but not to kaion, the good — not the highest 
good. It may exist, and it has been, in the midst of the 
lowest moral debasement. The love of the beautiful in 
nature and art never flourished more luxuriantly in Greece 
and Italy than in the days of their vilest corruption and 
degeneracy. Kritobulus at one of the banquets of Xen- 
ophon said : " By the gods, I would rather be beautiful 
than be King of Persia." And a modern writer says that 
" the four things most desirable as a crown to the happi- 
ness of life are beauty, riches, health, and friends ;" plac- 
ing beauty at the head of the list. I would reverse the order 



THE ROSES. 23 

precisely, and first ask friends, then health, then wealth, 
and then beauty, ^^efore all these, of course, a right mind 
would have One Friend, and if the rest were added, what 
more could heart desire ! If we put beauty last, it is be- 
cause it is the crown and glory of all the rest. Hence, 
woman was made last, and the last becomes first. Ana- 
creon sings of woman endowed with beauty, in which she 
is stronger than lions or men. Beauty in nature is woman 
in creation. Our sweetest Christian poet, in his " World 
before the Flood," recounts the work of creation, day by 
day, and in language of high poetic fancy speaks of the 
several parts of the work as done by the various energies 
or faculties of the Creator : thus He looked, and " sun and 
stars came forth to meet his eye." And last of all when 
he comes to the creation of Woman, the poet says : 

" He made her with a smile of grace, 
And left the smile that made her, on her face." 

Thus beauty is the smile of the Lord ; the charm of 
being \ the fertile garden in the desert of life. We might 
live without it, and so we might live if we were blind. 
But what the earth now is to the blind, it would be to all 
if nothing grew but what is good to eat or wear. If " that 
reforming ass" who wished to "take down the sun and 
light the world with gas" were to root out all flowers in 
the pathway of life, and plant it with corn, he would 
prove his wisdom by the length of his ears. 



IV. 

THE BIRDS. 

Our daily and constant companions, as we sit under 
the trees, are the birds in the boughs overhead. I have 
tried several times to reckon the number and varieties of 
feathered songsters who are part and parcel of the house- 
hold. We allow no gun to be fired on the premises, no 
bird to be disturbed in the pursuit of an honest living, or 
in the care of his own family, and consequently the birds 
are very familiar and abundant. Besides the sparrows, 
cedar-birds, yellow-birds, orioles, robins, phoebes, wrens, 
thrushes, quails, and larks, we have the mocking-birds in 
great numbers, whose music is wonderful for its sweetness 
and variety ; misleading us often into the idea that the 
various tribes have gathered about us to give a grand 
concert, the finest singers having "volunteered their serv- 
ices for this occasion." But after watching to see as 
wejl as to hear, we find that most of the music comes from 
the mocking-birds, whose skill is so remarkable as to de- 
ceive the best ear. It becomes a curious question, Why 
do the birds sing ? Have they themselves a musical ear, 
an organization peculiarly favorable to the enjoyment of 
song ? 

It is mentioned in an interesting work, entitled " Mis- 
cellanea Curiosa," that Mr. Clayton and Dr. Maudlin 
discovered a remarkable peculiarity in the structure of 
the ears of birds, particularly those distinguished for their 



THE BIRDS. 25 

song. Contrary to what takes place in man or in quad- 
rupeds, there is in birds almost a direct passage from one 
ear to the other, so that, if the drum of both ears be pricked, 
water will pass, when poured in, from one ear to the other. 
There is, however, no cochlea, but a small cochlea pas- 
sage, which opens into a large cavity, formed between the 
two bony plates of the skull, and this passes all round the 
head. The upper and external plate of the bone forming 
the skull is supported by many hundreds of small thread- 
like pillars or columns, which rest upon the lower and 
interior plate, immediately over the brain. Now, what is 
worthy of attention is that this passage between the outer 
and inner plates of the skull was observed to be strikingly 
larger in song-birds than in birds which are not possessed 
of musical powers. So very remarkable is this difference 
described to be, that any person to whom it has been 
once pointed out may readily pronounce, upon inspecting 
the skull of a bird, whether it was a bird of song or other- 
wise, though he might have no previous knowledge of the 
bird or its habits. No other animal, examined with a view 
to comparison in these particulars, was found to have any 
resemblance of conformation, except the mole — an animal 
reputed to be very quick of hearing. This singular con- 
struction of the skull in birds is evidently conformable to 
the known principles of acoustics, and is, in fact, a sort 
of whispering gallery for increasing the intensity of the 
sounds conveyed to the ear. 

It would be worthy of the investigation of anatomists 
to endeavor to ascertain whether the skulls of celebrated 
musicians have a greater interval between the outer and 
inner tables than the skulls of those who are deficient in 
musical ears. 

The inference to be drawn from these facts would be 



26 UNDER THE TREES. 

that birds, whose music is far more exquisite than that of 
the human voice, and therefore far beyond any instrument 
of human contrivance, have joy in their songs even more 
keen and perhaps exalted than we who sit under the trees, 
and imagine that they are making music for our delight. 
We have read of a canary-bird that sang itself to death. 
Birds often die of apoplexy, overtasking their energies, or 
exposing themselves to the sun. There is something very 
like human nature in the birds. They have warm and 
tender affections. Mrs. Monteath's poem, in which she 
tells of the death of two doves who could not survive the 
death of a favorite child, is one of the most touching and 
beautiful things in the language. A solitary gentleman, 
whose principal delight it had been to observe the con- 
duct of animals, gives the following account of the affec- 
tion of two birds : 

" They were a species of paroquet called guinea spar- 
rows, and were confined in a square cage. The cup which 
contained their food was placed in the bottom of the cage. 
iThe male was almost continually seated on the same 
perch with the female. They sat close together, and 
viewed each other from time to time with evident tender- 
ness. If they separated, it was but for a few moments, 
for they hastened to return and place themselves near to 
each other. They often appeared to engage in a kind 
of conversation, which they continued for some time, and 
seemed to answer each other, varying their sounds, and ele- 
vating and lowering their notes. Sometimes they seemed 
to quarrel, but their disagreements were of momentary 
duration, and succeeded by additional tenderness. The 
happy pair thus passed four years in a climate greatly 
different from that in which they had before lived. At 
the end of that time the female fell into a state of Ian- 



THE BIRDS. 27 

guor, which had all the appearance of old age. Her legs 
swelled, and it was no longer possible that she could go 
to take her food. But the male, ever attentive and alert 
in whatever concerned her, brought it in his bill and 
emptied it into hers. He was in this manner her most 
vigilant purveyor during the space of four months. The 
infirmities of his companion increased daily. Becoming 
unable at last to sit upon the perch, she remained crouch- 
ed at the bottom of the cage, and from time to time made 
a few ineffectual efforts to regain the lowest perch. The 
male seconded her feeble efforts with all his power. 
Sometimes he seized with his bill the upper part of her 
wing, by way of drawing her to him ; sometimes he took 
her by the bill, and endeavored to raise her up, repeat- 
ing these efforts many times. His motions, his gestures, 
his continual solicitude, expressed an ardent desire to aid 
the weakness of his companion, and to alleviate her suf- 
ferings. But the spectacle became still more interesting, 
and even touching, when the female was on the point of 
expiring. The unhappy male went ceaselessly round and 
round his mate, and redoubled his assiduities and tender 
cares. He tried to open her bill, designing to give her 
some nourishment. His emotion increased every instant. 
He paced and repaced the cage with the greatest agita- 
tion, and at intervals uttered the most plaintive cries. 
At other times he fixed his eyes upon her, and preserved 
the most sorrowful silence. It was impossible to mistake 
these expressions of grief and despair. His faithful com- 
panion at last expired. From that time he himself lan- 
guished, and survived her but a few months." 

We know less of the habits of birds than of almost 
any other animals, because they are generally out of 
sight, though very near us. Only one man ever lived 



28 UNDER THE TREES. 

who had the patience, perseverance, and fortitude to study 
the ways of the birds. He has left a name that will al- 
ways be associated with them, and with this region of the 
Hudson River. While the upper part of the island of 
Manhattan was almost a wilderness, he came to the spot 
which is now known by his name on Washington Heights, 
and there cleared away some of the forest, and built a 
house which still stands in the midst of " Audubon Park." 
The city is rapidly crowding in and around it ; but the 
park holds its own, and the birds hold their own in its 
venerable trees and in the forest cemetery adjoining, 
v/here lie the bones of John James Audubon. He was 
born of French parents, near New Orleans, in 1780. His 
father, an enthusiast for liberty, was with Washington at 
Valley Forge ; and the Audubon family still possess the 
portraits of both, painted in the camp ; that of Washing- 
ton being the first ever taken of him. 

"At a very early age, Audubon was sent to France, 
and educated in art and science under the best masters, 
among whom was David. The love of birds, which be- 
came the passion of his life, manifested itself in infancy ; 
and when he returned from France he betook himself to 
his native woods, and began a collection of drawings 
which made the germ of 'The Birds of America.' His 
father gave him a plantation on the rich banks of the 
Schuylkill ; and luxury and fortune offered their bland- 
ishments to wean him from his love of adventure. But 
his heart was in the forest; and in 1810, with a young 
wife, an infant son, and his unfailing rifle, he embarked 
in an open skiff on the Ohio to find a new home. The 
mellow lights and shadows of our Indian summer had 
fallen along the shores of that queen of rivers. At long 
intervals the axe of the squatter was beginning to disturb 



THE BIRDS. 29 

, the solemn reign of nature. He settled in Kentucky, 
and in the central region of that vast valley through which 
the Mississippi rolls on to the sea he pursued his studies 
and roamings. He has spent more years in the forests 
than most men live. 

" Among the great lakes of the North, he saw beyond 
the reach of his rifle a strange, gigantic bird sweeping 
over the waters. He hunted for that bird ten years, and 
found it again three thousand miles from the spot where 
he first saw it. Meanwhile he had been chilled with 
eternal frosts, and burned with perpetual heats. He slept 
many nights across branches of trees, waked by panther 
screams; and many nights he passed in cane-brakes, 
where he did not dare to sleep. He saw the knife of the 
savage whetted for him ; stepped on venomous serpents ; 
started the cougar from his secret lair ; swam swollen 
streams with his gun, ammunition, drawings, and journals 
lashed on his head ; on equatorial rivers alligators stared 
at him as he landed ; in polar regions the water turned 
to ice as it fell from his benumbed limbs when he struck 
the bank ; his tongue was parched with thirst on deserts, 
and he laid himself down famishing to wait, like Elijah, 
till he was fed by the birds of heaven. This was his his- 
tory during the life of a generation. And yet, through 
this long period of peril and suffering, which Caesar would 
not have borne to have heard the tramp of his legions in 
three quarters of the globe, his courage never failed, his 
love for nature never cooled, his reverence for God — 
whose illimitable universe he was exploring — deepened 
the longer he gazed. Nor did he lose a throb of humane 
feeling for civilized men, from whpse habitations he had 
exiled himself." 

Such was the man whose " Birds of America " are the 



30 UNDER THE TREES. 

memorials of his enthusiasm and heroism. His wander- « 
ings over, he came here to the banks of our own river, 
and with that devoted wife who started with him on his 
pilgrimages he spent the evening of his eventful life, and 
died in 185 1. She still survives him, an elegant, accom- 
plished lady, ninety years of age, more active in all the 
duties and enjoyments of life, in walks of charity and use- 
fulness, than thousands of the young ladies of our day. 
She is a model of the virtues and graces that adorn her 
sex. 

When a copy of the " Birds of America " was received 
by the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, Baron Cu- 
vier said, " It is the most magnificent monument which 
art has ever raised to ornithology." 

Four beautiful brown birds, each with a top-knot on his 
head, are sitting on a tree close by me, and flooding the 
grove with their rich melodies. I do not know them 
even by name. But if I had " Audubon's Birds of Amer- 
ica," I should find them colored to the life. 



V. 

INSECT LIFE. 

You can not live under the trees without a " realizing 
sense " of the variety and wealth of life besides your own. 
Just now an eagle came to us from the rocky palisades 
across the river, or perhaps he had wandered from the 
Highlands above us — a majestic bird ; he soared over 
and near us for a few moments, and then took his way 
slowly to the North, leaving our birds to the enjoyment 
of the quiet he had disturbed. And he was no more to 
them than they are to the millions of insects that swarm 
in the leaves, and the air, and the earth we tread. For 

"As naturalists observe, a flea 
Has smaller fleas on him that prey, 
And these have smaller still to bite 'em, 
And so proceed ad infinitum.'''' 

The flight and fright of the birds when the eagle comes 
near, and the gathering of the chickens under the moth- 
er-hen when the hawk appears, remind us of the fact that 
multitudes of the tribes of animals live on one another, 
the work of destruction going on so constantly that the 
world would be depopulated if the arrangements of Nat- 
ure for re-supply were not ample to meet all the losses. 
The fish multiply rapidly in the little pond at the foot of 
the lawn, yet the little ones are devoured by the larger, 
and millions of eggs are eaten up almost as soon as they 
are laid. The birds that farmers and gardeners make 



32 UNDER THE TREES. 

war upon, and would gladly exterminate because they eat 
a share of the fruit, are the fell destroyers of myriads of 
insects and worms that would doubtless be far more de- 
structive of the good things we wish to preserve for our 
own use. Every thing has its use. Some things, if they 
have any good in them, have a very poor way of showing 
it. What these rose-bugs are made for, at least what use- 
ful purpose they answer, is far beyond me to imagine. 
They come in troops, a flying artillery, charge upon one 
bed of roses, and, like the locusts of Egypt, devastate the 
whole, and then pass on to another. Beauty perishes be- 
fore them. The flower of the field, the pride of the gar- 
den, the hopes of bouquets to come, fade as they approach. 
It requires a large amount of perseverance to destroy 
them, and more patience to submit to their ravages. 

What on earth, or rather under the earth, does the 
ground-mole live for ? Blind to all the utilities of walks 
or beds, he pursues his subterranean route of ruin, so si- 
lently, so obscurely, so rapidly, that the work of destruc- 
tion is done before the presence of the enemy is suspect- 
ed. " Wherefore do the wicked live ?" is a question ask- 
ed of old ; and we may inquire, and in vain, why moles 
and rose-bugs, to say nothing of curculio, the weevil, the 
musquito, have their existence in such a beautiful world 
as this ? Are they part of the curse under which creation 
groans, waiting to be delivered ? And will there be any 
musquitoes in the millennium ? For however we may as- 
sure ourselves that every thing is made for some useful 
purpose, and therefore ought to be regarded with a sort 
of complacency, even when we can see no good of it now, 
there is no one who does not wish for that "good time 
coming," when not only the lion and the lamb will lie 
down together, but musquitoes will cease to bite. Hap- 



INSECT LIFE. 33 

pily we are free from this curse here, if it be one ; but I 
speak with a deep sense of the evil, from the memory of 
summers spent in a place where musquitoes most do con- 
gregate ; where living is cheap, but the musquitoes sent in 
their bills, so many and so long that we were glad to es- 
cape, with the loss of some blood, to a land of pure de- 
light, where these disturbers do not bite nor give us songs 
in the night. Yet they are only the small annoyances of 
life. They are tests and trials of one's patience. If 
properly borne, they are as good for the temper as Span- 
ish flies for a blister. Learning to bear the ills they 
bring, we may be fitted to bear the many greater ills that 
iiesh is heir to, and so musquitoes may prove to be a 
blessing, not indeed in disguise, but a friend instead of a 
foe. 

We have been more interested in the ant race than in 
any other of the insect tribes that abound. It is even 
more difficult to study them than Audubon found.^it to 
learn the habits of birds. They have the family and com- 
munity system with a general government, more thorough- 
ly established than any other tribe except the bees, whom 
they resemble in many of their habits. The system of 
slavery prevails among them, under some mild and whole- 
some laws that might with advantage be imitated by the 
human race where that unhappy system prevails. The 
workers or servants perform all the hard service of the 
family, while the winged heads of the household live in 
idleness quite unworthy of the name that has been a syn- 
onym in all ages for industry. Indeed these idle ants 
are often disposed to leave the premises, but the workers 
who have no wings keep watch of them, and bring them 
back to their duty of presiding over the establishment. 
Curiously wrought beneath the surface of the earth is the 

C 



34 ' UNDER THE TREES. 

house in which these little creatures live, with galleries 
connecting various apartments, stored with food collected 
by the servant class, and fitted to survive the ruin that 
often overtakes the little mound or portico on the surface 
that is only an entrance to the palace below. Here they 
have their "insect life," perhaps more perfectly domes- 
ticated than any other of the many families into which 
the animal creation is subdivided. They have a rapid 
mode of exchanging " ideas," if that is the word by which 
to designate their mental operations ; and the evidences 
of their capacity to adapt means to ends is far ahead of 
many more exalted races. Their sense of smell is very 
acute, and by it they are guided to distant places for 
food, and led back on the same trail to the little home 
they are bound to supply. If each ant in these myriads 
have his own house to care for, and the family relation is 
preserved, as it is among birds, the organization must be 
very perfect to enable them to distinguish each other and 
their ''respective dwellings. The discipline is perfect, un- 
der a monarchical form of government, administered by 
a queen, whom the workers carry on their shoulders from 
room to room, and to whom they yield the most profound 
respect and obedience. 

These are the lowest forms of life that we can study 
with much success, without some aid to the naked eye. 
But take the microscope, and worlds of new life and 
beauty are unfolded within and beneath the humblest in- 
sect that flies or creeps. The atmosphere swarms with 
animals where we do not suspect it ; and huge monsters 
play in the crystal water. The wisest of men has said, 
" Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways and be 
wise ;" and even if I were lazier to-day than usual — for it 
is the hottest day in many weeks past — I would not have 



INSECT LIFE. 35 

far to go to get the lesson of wisdom which Solomon rec- 
ommended ; for as I was coming out to this rude writ- 
ing-chair under the trees, I passed and paused to admire 
a huge hillock, a dwelling-place for ants, who were run- 
ning in and out, a busy race, within whose city no man's 
eye has seen, though in all ages their habits have been 
studied by thoughtful men. These ants are not so great 
as those mentioned by Herodotus and Pliny, which were 
"not so large as a dog, but bigger than a fox." Some 
other early writers speak of ants that rival the wolf in 
size, the dog in shape, the lion in its feet, the leopard in 
its skin, and from whose fury the Indian has to fly on the 
back of a camel. That must be an exaggeration. 

Within this heap of sand is a miniature house of many 
mansions or apartments : yes, many houses, a village with 
streets and galleries, which the workers of these tribes 
have toilfully and skillfully excavated with their little 
mouths. They have made mortar by moistening clay 
with rain drops, they have used grass covered with this 
paste for columns and arches and roofing. Others pene- 
trate a tree and there hew out a home, with walls as thin 
as paper, separating the residences of the several inhab- 
itants. They paint these walls black sometimes ; others 
leave them the color of the wood. Froebel, in his " Trav- 
els in Central America," tells of a species of ants in New 
Mexico who construct their nests exclusively of small 
stones of one kind, chosen by the insects from the sand 
of the steppes and deserts ; in one part these heaps were 
formed of small fragments of crystallized feldspars ; and 
in another imperfect crystals of red transparent garnet 
were the materials of which the ant-hills were built, and 
any quantity of them might there be obtained. 

In Southern Africa the ants raise solid nests of clay. 



36 UNDER THE TREES. 

shaped like a baker's oven. The Caffres, when first per- 
mitted to settle here, converted these nests into ovens. 
Having expelled the ants by smoke, they scooped out the 
nests, leaving the crust a few inches thick, and then used 
them for baking their loaves. 

"Another African species is described by the Rev. 
Lansdown Guilding as ' parasol ants.' ' In Trinidad,' he 
says, 'we may see marching legions of these creatures 
with leaves elevated over their heads, like a London crowd 
on a rainy day following the Lord Mayor's show with in- 
numerable umbrellas ; or, rather, as they observe the or- 
der and decorum which the crowd despise, they represent, 
on a Liliputian scale, with their leafy screens, the ene- 
mies of Macbeth descending from ' Birnam Wood to Dun- 
sinane.' These leaves are, however, probably collected 
to cover their nests rather than to 'shadow the number 
of their host.' 

" Madame Meriam describes the ' visitation ants ' of 
Surinam, which appear only at certain seasons, or about 
once in two or three years. These multitudes receive a 
cheerful welcome from the natives, who throw open the 
doors of their houses, when the ants enter, traverse every 
part of their dwellings, and, after destroying all the vermin 
secreted therein, take their departure. 

" Dr. Poeppig described the ants of Peru as most nu- 
merous in the Lower Andes : they are from an inch in 
size, and of all colors between yellow and black. In the 
huts only are seven different species, and in the woods 
of Pampayaes six-and-twenty species. One of the very 
useful kinds, which does not attack man unless provoked, 
is the Peruvian wandering ant, which comes in endless 
swarms from the wilderness, where it again vanishes ; it 
is not unwelcome, because it does no injury to the plan- 



INSECT LIFE. 37 

tations, but destroys innumerable pernicious insects of 
other kinds, and even amphibious animals and small 
quadrupeds. ' Of these ants,' says Dr. Poeppig, ' the 
broad columns go forward, disregarding every obstacle, 
and millions march close together in a swarm that takes 
hours in passing ; while on both sides the warriors, dis- 
tinguished by their size and color, move busily backward 
and forward, ready for defense, and likewise employed in 
looking for and attacking animals which are so unfortu- 
nate as to be unable to escape, either by force or by rapid 
flight. If they approach a house, the owner readily opens 
every part, and goes away ; and all noxious vermin that 
may have taken up their abode in the roof of palm-leaves, 
the insects and larvae, are destroyed, or compelled to seek 
safety in flight. The most secret recesses of the huts do 
not escape their search, and the animal that waits for 
their arrival is infallibly lost. They even, as the natives 
affirm, overpower large snakes, for the warriors form a 
circle round the reptile while basking in the sun. On 
perceiving its enemies, it endeavors to escape, but in vain ; 
for six or more of them have fixed themselves upon it, 
and, while the tortured animal endeavors to relieve itself 
by a simple turn, the number of its foes is increased a 
hundredfold. Thousands of the smaller ants from the 
main column hasten up, and, in spite of the writhings of 
the snake, wound it in innumerable places, and in a few 
hours nothing remains of it but a clean skeleton." 

But I am much more interested in the ants that live 
under the trees with me than in their cousins of Peru or 
Trinidad. Here they are a very orderly community, with 
laws and government, perhaps, in common with all the 
tribes of ants the world over. I have never seen them 
milking the aphides, or slugs, that infest the leaves of 



38 UNDER THE TREES. 

trees, but Linnaeus says they do. I have seen them often 
carrying their food into their granaries, though some 
learned ant-writers affirm that they do not lay up stores 
for the winter, but lie dormant in cold weather. That 
they have foresight enough to provide beforehand food 
for rainy days when they can not work is very plain from 
what we see them doing daily. 

The accounts of the wars and expeditions of ants read 
like pages of man's history. " Ants of different species 
assail one another in their foraging excursions ; and 
pitched battles are fought between the colonist ants. 
Huber describes thousands of combatants thus engaged, 
with great carnage ; and a naturalist has seen fifty wood 
ants fighting within a few inches' area of what were sup- 
posed to be the boundaries of their several territories. 
Their bite is so sharp, and the acrid juice which they 
infuse is so deleterious, that many are thus disabled or 
killed outright. Huber also describes the exploits of the 
warrior ants, which almost exceed belief; but in 1832 
such accounts were verified in the Black Forest and in 
Switzerland, with respect to the 'Amazon ant,' and on the 
Rhine as to the 'sanguinary ant.' Both these species 
make war on the ants of other species, particularly the 
' dusky ant,' not for mere fighting, but to make slaves of 
the vanquished, to do the drudgery of the conquerors' ant- 
home. They are as cunning as diplomatists : they do 
not capture the adult ants, and carry them into slavery, 
but make booty of their eggs and cocoons, which, after 
the contest is decided — and the warriors are always con- 
querors — are carried off to the Amazonian citadel, and 
being hatched there, the poor slaves are probably not 
aware that it is not their native colony. Huber testifies 
to such expeditions for capturing slaves ; and a living 



INSECT LIFE. 39 

naturalist witnessed, in a great number of instances, the 
slaves at work for the victorious captors." 

It fills me with wonder to think that under the surface 
of the earth we tread there is a miniature world of life 
and motion, so like our world, where there is no speech 
nor language that we can understand, but where there is 
certainly thought and purpose, the adaptation of means 
to ends, and a display of skill that no human ingenuity 
can approach. 

Yesterday I was studying the far-down depths of ani- 
mal life with the aid of a microscope, that brought into 
view the active operations of a living creature in the sap 
of a bit of grass. Its motions as it turned a wheel to 
draw up its food were so natural, it was hard to believe 
we must have a glass to magnify the object six hundred 
times to bring this infinitesimal being within the reach 
of mortal eye. And so it is with the whole world below 
us. There is a distance down as far and as densely peo- 
pled with sentient inhabitants as there is above us. In- 
deed, the angels are not farther removed from man than 
this animalcule, and, physically considered, they are per- 
haps nearer. Such lessons we learn from ant-hills : at 
least we began with one of them, and have ended with 
the angels. 



VI. 

SUNSHINE. 

The trees clap their hands to-day. The rocks and 
hills, the green grass in the meadows and the silent river, 
are all vocal and musical with praise. It is as if the 
spring-time had suddenly leaped out of the bosom of 
winter, in its beauty of leaves and flowers, with songs of 
birds and glad warmth of summer. 

There is great power in sunshine. It is life for plants 
and life for animals. There are some of both, doubtless, 
who can live in the dark, but nature loves light. Put a 
plant in a dark room, and then admit a single beam of 
light into it, and the plant will grow toward it, twisting it- 
self out of shape for the sake of getting into the little 
gleam of sunshine. Some of these apple-trees are one- 
sided because the forest trees have overshadowed them, 
and, instead of growing up and extending their branches 
symmetrically as they should, they creep out laterally to 
get into the sun. The question often comes up for con- 
sideration. Shall we cut down the trees to let in the sun, or 
keep the trees and live in the shade ? We compromise the 
matter, and have a fair proportion of both, just like life 
itself. And there is this analogy too, that you may have 
whichever you choose to make for yourself. Plant trees 
and you have shade. Cut them down and the sun will 
come in. It is just as easy, and indeed much easier to 
regulate this matter in the house and in the heart. It 



SUNSHINE. 41 

may not be well for us to have sunshine always. It is 
wisely arrangea that night follows the day in regular suc- 
cession. It would be tedious to have daylight always. 
Providence is very kind in ordering it, that this change 
shall give us just what we need for rest and labor. So 
all things are adapted to each other, just as this green 
of the trees and grass is a color that suits the eye better 
than any other : it was made for the eye, or the eye was 
made for the color, it is no matter which. The change 
from sunlight to darkness is a type of the change that 
most of us find in our daily experience of life. Few if 
any are always in the light. The days of darkness are 
many. It is good for us, doubtless, that the sun is not 
always shining. 

But too much shade sours and kills us. There is far 
more of this in the world than there ought to be. It is 
very much as one pleases, whether he will be gloomy or 
glad. One man will make perpetual sunshine wherever 
he goes or stays. Another will carry a pall with him, and 
spread it over the faces and spirits of every company 
he enters. And this is more true of the family than of 
society. 

There is my old friend Longface. He is never pleased 
with any thing that any body says or does, or if he is 
pleased, he has a way of hiding his pleasure that makes 
his family feel that he is out of humor all the time. The 
breakfast is late, and it does not suit him when it is ready. 
He meets his children without a smile or a word of morn- 
ing welcome, and leaves them to go to his business as 
if he had no interest in what was to be their business 
through the day. Longface has no small change to pass 
among his acquaintances in the street or in the market. 
A stranger would suppose there had been a death in his 



42 UNDER THE TREES. 

family, or his business matters were in disorder, he looks 
so glum when all around him is so cheery. Longface 
seldom speaks but to grumble. He finds faults where 
there are none, and speaks of faults that do really exist, 
when other people would say nothing of them. For it is 
making matters worse to be talking about troubles, unless 
talking will cure or help them. But Longface never sees 
a bright side to any thing, because he is in the shade, and 
no sun shines on any thing he sees. If there is a bright 
side, he turns away from it as if the sun hurt his eyes. 
It is hard to say whether Longface have any sunshine in 
his heart or not ; if he have, it never comes to the surface, 
and his wife and children, who ought to feel it and see it, 
have never had a glimpse of it playing around them. 
They do not know any reason why he should not be a 
happy man ; but if he is happy, he takes a droll way to 
show it, or, rather, he never shows it. 

Of quite .another pattern is my neighbor Blithe. He 
rises with the lark, and has a heart as full of praise. All 
things work for good with him, and his principle is to 
make the best of every thing. In the house, at the table, 
and in the evening circle, he is always cheerful, and his 
sunny smile and pleasant words make good cheer contin- 
ually. He thinks no ill of any one, or, if he do think so, 
he keeps it to himself Every one loves Blithe, and a 
few such men would make the neighborhood a joy in all 
this part of the earth. I wish he would go about as a 
sort of missionary, not to tell people any thing, but to 
show them how to make the world happier and better by 
the power of their own cheerful living. In the best of 
times, and under the most favorable circumstances, we 
shall have clouds and storms, and cold, damp northeast 
winds enough in this world, without any artificial means 



SUNSHINE. 43 

to make uncomfortable weather. And there is plenty of 
trouble, vexation, disappointment, and loss to try the faith 
and patience of Job, or any other man of patience, with- 
out our adding to the stock by our own sulks and selfish- 
ness. When Lady Raffles, in India, was smitten by the 
death of a favorite child, she shut herself up in a dark 
room and refused to be comforted. A native servant 
woman rebuked her ingratitude and repining, and said, 
"You have been here many days shut up in the dark — 
for shame ! — leave off weeping, and let me open a win- 
dow." That was good counsel. Open the window. Let 
in the sunshine. It is good for plants and good for peo- 
ple ; good for them in health and sickness, in sorrow and 
joy. Children ought to be in sunlight every day. The 
nursery should be the sunniest room in the house. It is 
not healthful to keep the little ones in a room where the 
sun does not shine directly. I love to sit under these 
trees and write while the warm sun is above them and 
me, and its beams are falling and lying all around in a 
wealth of glory. I know my favorite poet has said, 

" The sun is but a spark of fire, 
A transient meteor in the sky." 

But he is God's great dispenser of light and warmth ; a 
giver of good to every son and daughter of man ; a fount- 
ain of blessing to every leaf and flower and herb, the 
source of life to animated nature ; and I wonder not that 
Persian pagans paid divine honors to him who is the 
brightest manifestation to their eyes of .the Infinite God. 



VII. 

SHOWERS. 

Such a day as this for sunshine and showers we do 
not remember, and our out-of-door habits make us mindful 
of remarkable days. We have had so much rain lately 
that the seeds, rotting in the ground, have failed to come 
up as they were expected. And we could readily have 
dispensed with these showers to-day. Indeed, according 
to our way of thinking, this weather was not wanted at 
all ; but we have long since learned that the Lord of the 
Harvest has a much better idea of what is best for the 
crops and the people than we have, and so we trust Him 
to take care of the weather. We have never yet attained 
to the contentment of the shepherd who said the weather 
would be just such as pleased him, because whatever 
pleased the Lord would please him. But we have found 
that there is no good in fretting about weather or any 
thing else. It will neither rain nor shine more or less 
for any thing we can say or do. Fretting only wears out 
the soul and body both, while the seasons come and go 
without regard to our impatience. 

If we had no rain till all were agreed to have it, the 
ground would go dry. Even a drought would not make 
the people unanimous as to time or quantity. When his 
congregation wanted Pastor Jones to pray for rain, he 
told them he could have it whenever they were agreed 
as to the time. One farmer had his hay out, and it 



SHOWERS. 45 

would be bad fot- him if it rained to-morrow ; and anoth- 
er would be very much put out by wet weather the next 
day ; and so it went on, until it was found that unanimity 
was out of the question. 

A traveling preacher on his journey called at a cottage 
where the good woman entertained him with dinner; and 
when he asked a blessing, she inquired if he were a min- 
ister. He told her he was, and a Methodist. She said 
her little garden was nearly perishing for want of rain, 
and she wished he would pray for it. He did so, and 
went his way. Soon the heavens gathered blackness, 
and a terrific shower came down, washing her garden so 
badly that she suffered more by the freshet than the 
drought. " There," she said, " that's just like those Meth- 
odists : they never can do any thing in moderation." 
We must learn to take things as they come. Our way is 
not always the best way, and never is unless it is God's 
way also ; and we may be very sure when we have a plan 
or purpose or an expectation that fails, there is some wise 
and good end to be answered, for the Lord makes no 
mistakes, and his love never fails. It seems to me that 
my Lima beans are to be a total failure, they are so slow 
in coming ; and when I have tried to look into the root 
of the difficulty by disinterring some of the seed long 
buried, it proves to be rotting instead of germinating. 
But there is yet time to plant again ; and I reckon that 
the future of the season will be so favorable to the growth 
of the garden that we shall have a fair supply. Even if 
we do not, there will be something else abundant. 

For after these showers there will be warm, sunny days, 
in which vegetation will rush on apace. Rainy days are 
reckoned dark, sad days, and they are apt emblems of 
the sorrows we suffer, emblems in more ways than one. 



46 UNDER THE TREES. 

The skies weep, and so do we. But weeping endures for 
a night, and joy comes in the morning. These showers 
are good for the earth, and our tears are good for the 
heart. Out of the depths of sorrow spring up the fruits 
of holy peace and solid comfort, such as they never know 
who have not mourned. Some good people — real Chris- 
tians, no doubt — have long spells of bad weather, in which 
they suffer deep spiritual depression, losing all enjoyment 
in divine things, and seem to be shut out from the sun- 
shine of their Father's face. There is very little of this 
experience on record in the Bible. David was often in 
deep water, all the waves and billows went over him. 
But the cause was some obvious sin into which he had 
fallen. Modern saints are often under a cloud, and sin 
probably makes the cloud ; but the sin is so concealed 
even from themselves that they do not know what it is. 
Dyspepsia is a great foe to grace. It darkens the sky 
and shakes the hope of many Christians, sometimes sinks 
them into despair. They think the trouble is in their 
hearts, when it is in their stomachs. It was always strange 
to me that David Brainerd was so miserable, so long and 
often. Dr. Payson had awful times of spiritual darkness 
and distress. The sweet poet Cowper was a wretched 
victim of religious melancholy ; and after one of his worst 
attacks, he wrote — 

"Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; 
The clouds ye so much dread 
Are big with mercy and will break 
In blessings on your head." 

Perhaps the causes were more physical than moral. God 
never sends his children into the dark. They go there, 
and weep and fast and pray ; but He would have them in 
the light of his countenance, rejoicing always before him. 



SHOWERS. 47 

The sorrows of the good are the same that other men 
have. Sickness, death, care, disappointment, break in on 
the enjoyment of the saint, and he sits under a cloud, and 
the storm beats on him, and the clouds return after the 
rain, as they have done all this day. One trouble follows 
on the heels of another. But the sun is shining behind 
the cloud ; there is a " silver lining " to it, and by-and- 
by the light will burst out in beauty and great glory, and 
the afflicted one will rejoice that he has been afflicted. 

And so we will wait patiently till this wet weather 
passes by. It will be all right in a day or two, and very 
likely we shall be wise enough to see that it is better so 
than otherwise. 



VIII. 

BUGS. 

Walking under the trees, I found in the path a robin 
partially under the ground. He had not been drawn into 
a hole, but the earth had been removed from underneath 
him, and his head and wings and tail were resting on the 
walk. I examined him, and finding him dead, and evi- 
dently in the hands of some animal who designed to make 
use of him, I left him. Returning to the same spot an 
hour or two after, I found him drawn into a hole, head 
first, and it required some little effort to extricate him. 
Throwing him aside, I left him for the day, and toward 
night he was drawn in again, and was now so nearly bur- 
ied that only part of his tail was above ground. Once 
more I rescued him from the grave, and leaving him in 
the walk, went away. Again he was carried to the hole, 
and I found him with the tips of his wings and his tail 
protruding, and these were quivering, as the body was be- 
ing drawn with considerable force into the earth. The 
gardener was sure it was a snake carrying the bird under 
for more convenient mastication ; but when we struck 
with the spade below so as to cut him in two, we found 
nothing. Once more we made the ground smooth and 
hard, and throwing the bird aside, left it. The next morn- 
ing it was again going under. I drew it out suddenly, 
and found the beast. It was a bug, about an inch long, 
and slender, yellow, with black stripes. His strength was 



BUGS. 49 

amazing, when his size was considered ; and as he seemed 
to be the only engineer and power employed in moving 
the bird, which was twenty or thirty times as large as he, 
and was drawn by it into a hole requiring great extra 
force, besides what was necessary to overcome the weight, 
it appeared to me almost incredible that he could do it. 
Some friends wishing the beetle to be preserved as a cu- 
rious specimen in natural history, I performed for the first 
time that barbarous operation so common with natural- 
ists : I put a pin through him, and fastened him to a 
board in the barn, designing to present him to some mu- 
seum with a statement of his exploits. I left him there 
to his own reflections, and the next morning, to my sur- 
prise, as Samson walked off with the gates of Gaza, even 
so had this beetle taken himself off, not with the board, 
but with the pin, and I have heard and seen him no more. 
But another and smaller beetle of the same description 
is now making arrangements to bury a dead mole in the 
garden ; and if the beetles would kill all the moles, I 
would not disturb them. 

It is the instinct of this bug to take a carcass, and, hav- 
ing covered it with earth, to lay its eggs in it, which are 
hatched during the decomposition. This is any thing but 
a pleasing operation, and is one of those remarkable ar- 
rangements of nature that defy all human reason to ex- 
plain the why and wherefore. But it is so with many 
other habits of the lower orders of creation. They have 
a world of their own to live in, far below ours ; and yet 
they are so well adapted to it that they are doubtless 
able to enjoy it. No creature of God is made to be mis- 
erable. And if we can not see what comfort a beetle can 
find in a carcass, or what pleasure a mole gets in burrow- 
ing through the earth in search of his food, or a toad in 

D 



50 UNDER THE TREES. 

his sedentary habits, we may yet believe that in their own 
way they answer the ends for which they are made, and 
take as much enjoyment, or at least suffer as little, as the 
circumstances of the case admit. It is quite likely that 
they all answer some useful purpose. If man is the high- 
est order of animal on the earth, the ultimate object of 
insect life may be found in what the lower orders do to 
promote his good. But happiness is not man's highest 
good ; and the bugs that vex and bite him, when they 
fail to make him happy, may yet be doing him good. 

I have spoken of the naturalist Audubon, who, pursuing 
the work of his life in studying the habits of birds, would 
sit or lie all day under the trees in the forest, watching, 
in seclusion and silence, the motions of a little bird, that 
he might record its manner of life. And with equal in- 
terest one might study the ways and means of a beetle, 
and make notes of his habits. Entomology is a subject 
that invites the student into a wide and beautiful field of 
investigation ; and if it were studied in the school, it 
would bring children into the habit of regarding insects 
with more respect, and then they would cease to persecute 
them, as they do now, in mere sport or thoughtlessness. 
The mote that floats in the sunbeam has life, and a com- 
plete world of its own, as truly and perfectly developed 
as the eagle or the lion. Cowper said : 

" I would not enter on my list of friends 
(Though graced with polished manner and fine sense, 
Yet wanting sensibility) the man 
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." 

Uncle Toby lifted the window and put the fly out of 
it, saying, " There is room enough in the world for you 
and me." It was bloody Nero who delighted in tortur- 
ing insects. I would have a child familiar with the living 



BUGS. 5 1 

things around him, and fond of playing with them — find- 
ing enjoyment in friendship with the animal world, re- 
garding all as the creatures of God, and working out after 
their own order his praise. 

I was speaking of Cowper just now. As I sit here, 
and the squirrels run up the trunks and leap from tree to^ 
tree, or sit on the steps as if they were part of the family, 
I recall his familiar lines : 

" These shades are all my own. The timorous hare, 
Grown so familiar with her frequent guest, 
Scarce shuns me, and the stock-dove, unalarmed, 
Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends 
His long love-ditty for my near approach. 
The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play, 
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, 
Ascends the neighboring beech, there whisks his brush, 
And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries, 
With all the prettiness of feigned alarm, 
And anger insignificantly fierce." 

The British squirrels must be more demonstrative than 
mine, for they certainly do not carry on in this style, but 
disport themselves more quietly as they pursue their own 
pleasures, heedless of the human company that intrudes 
upon their domains without disturbing them. Cowper, 
more than any other, is a friend and companion for the 
fireside in the winter and the shade in summer. He is 
just the man you wish when saying, 

"But grant me this in my retreat, 
One friend, whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet." 

It was he who said, 

" 'Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat, 
To peep at such a world ; to see the stir 
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd; 



52 UNDER THE TREES. 

To hear the roar she sends through all her gates 
At a safe distance, where the dying sound 
Falls a soft murmur on th' uninjured ear." 

And without a tinge of his melancholy, the bane of his 
life, but in sympathy with him in his love of nature and 
his fellowship with beauty, we may take him into the 
country with us, and always find company and counsel in 
his pure leaves. 



IX. 

AN ARROW-HEAD. 

We are in the garden, and among the flowers and straw- 
berry beds, and rejoicing in the morning of another res- 
urrection. I think this has been as perfect a day as the 
Lord ever gave me to enjoy. Would such weather be 
well for us all the year round .'' Probably not. But it 
suits me exactly, as any weather suited the shepherd. 

The gardener handed me a flint arrow-head to-day, 
perhaps once used by the Indians, when they hunted the 
forests on these shores of the Hudson. It suggested to 
me that on many a field in our country the laborer will 
find implements of war, rusted or buried, fallen from the 
hands of our countrymen. Skeletons, too. How many 
shallow graves will be plowed over ! It is sweet to think 
that the days of warfare are accomplished, the flowers are 
blossoming on the field of the crushed skeleton, and peace 
reigns again. 

But this flint set me thinking of those very learned men 
who prove that man has lived on this earth thousands and 
thousands of years before the Bible record fixes the date 
of his creation. They prove the Bible to be false be- 
cause in the valley of the Somme, in France, a vast quan- 
tity of these flints have been found, which appear at first 
sight to have been fashioned by human hands, and they 
have been found buried under such conditions that geol- 
ogy assures us they must have been there many ages on 



54 UNDER THE TREES. 

ages before the Bible period. A work has been publish- 
ed in England to show the " Flint Implements from Drift 
not Authentic." Some kind friend has sent me an anal- 
ysis of the argument. The writer remarks with equal 
point and truth : 

" Sir Charles Lyell and similar writers devote the whole 
of their energies to proving the almost immeasurable ages 
that must have elapsed since the deposit of the flints re- 
cently found in Picardy and elsewhere ; and on deciding 
that question to their satisfaction, consider it a necessary 
and unquestionable conclusion that man has been for all 
these tens of thousands of years a denizen of this earth, 
and that without leaving any other traces of his existence 
than a number of flints, chipped about in the most incon- 
venient way possible for the purpose for which they are 
supposed to have been designed. But they appear to 
overlook the prior necessity of proving that these ' flint 
implements' are really the handiwork of man. The only 
foundation they have is the mere opinion of a few scien- 
tific men, against which is to be set the verdict to the 
contrary of other men of science equally learned ; and 
yet with this slender lever they hope to overthrow the 
credibility of the infallible Word of God. 

" A few of the arguments adduced against the theory 
that these chipped flints are human productions are the 
following : There is no necessity for the belief that they 
have been artificially formed, inasmuch as flint has a 
natural tendency to break into shapes similar to most of 
those that have been found. The writer of the pamphlet 
has picked up numbers of most perfect ' knives ' and 
'arrow-heads' among flints that have been broken up 
to mend the roads, and has also produced them — by 
heating a flint in the fire and then cooling it suddenly — 



AN ARROW-HEAD. 55 

quite equal to those discovered in France. They are ut- 
terly unsuited for use as arrow-heads. The conical bulb 
at the lower end would be a difficulty in fastening them 
to their shafts, the curved shape of many of them would 
render it impossible that they should fly straight, and the 
point is in some the most defective part. 

" The good and the bad are found indiscriminately mix- 
ed together ; from some so imperfect as to make it im- 
possible to ascribe them to human hands, to others which 
might from their appearance have been so produced. 
There often appears to be most chipping on those most 
entirely unsuitable for use, and among the rest are many 
so small as to be quite worthless for any purpose what- 
ever. This is just as we might expect to find them if 
formed by natural causes, but quite inconsistent with their 
being artificial. 

" They are none of them at all ground or polished as 
the Celtic flint tools are found to have been, but produced 
by the simple fracture of the flint and the chipping of its 
side ; nor do any of them bear the slightest trace of ever 
having been used. As to the almond-shaped flints, found 
in such numbers in France and supposed to be axe-heads, 
how is it that they are the only tools or similar utensils 
to be found there ? Surely the axe could not be the only 
thing used. And to what use could axes have been put 
by them ? The climate at that period is known to have 
been as cold as Iceland is now, and consequently could 
produce no trees — nothing larger than bushes and shrubs. 
It is suggested that they were used for cutting holes in 
the ice on their rivers ; but it would have been impossi- 
ble to cut through a massive coating of ice, such as must 
then have existed, with an implement the size of a man's 
hand. 



56 UNDER THE TREES. 

" The immense quantities in which they are discovered 
renders it impossible that they can be any thing else than 
natural formations. From the large number that has 
been found in three acres of land, and the great area 
which the ' implement' beds are known to cover, there 
must be along the banks of the Somme rathfer more than 
twelve millions of them. And we are asked to believe that 
these are just the lost axes of such a population as could 
have been supported in those icy deserts by the precari- 
ous sustenance to be derived from the chase ! 

" It is, indeed, a wonderful and a painful thing to behold 
how eager a certain class of writers in the present day, 
including not a few men of most unquestionable talent 
and even piety, ever show themselves in seizing the most 
flimsy pretense for casting discredit upon the -grand and 
simple verities of the written Word. The avidity with 
which the discovery of the supposed 'flint implements' in 
the valley of the Somme has been pounced upon by these 
gentlemen as affording incontrovertible proof of the ex- 
istence of pre- Adamite man is an instance of the spirit 
which we deplore. But so eager are they to create a 
theory that they overlook the most startling difficulties in 
the way of the acceptance of their creed. They will swal- 
low the largest camel that can be found, if brought before 
them under the auspices of the Geological Society, but 
turn with horror from a tiny gnat that even appears to 
have settled on the first page of the Bible, although all 
the rest of the world can see that it is nothing but a speck 
of dust on their own eyelash." 

This last illustration reminds me of a fact that occur- 
red in General Ford's barn, in Hoosic, New York, some 
forty or fifty years ago. One of his hired men, a stupid 
fellow, had been out with a gun, and taking refuge from 



AN ARROW-HEAD. 57 

the rain in an old barn or hay-rick that had little or noth- 
ing in it, he saw on one of the topmost beams an owl, at 
which he fired. The solemn bird sat still, and he fired 
again. A third shot never disturbed the slumbers of the 
night bird. Beginning to be a little alarmed, he put up 
his hand to his eyes, and as he raised the eyelash he 

found that a 1 was resting quietly there, and he had 

mistaken it for an owl at the top of the barn. So with 
many of our modern skeptics : blazing away at the owls 
which they fancy to exist in the Bible, they are fighting 
nothing but a maggot in their own brain. Our writer goes 
on to say : 

" Some of these theorizing gentlemen suggest in de- 
spair that there must have been a great trade carried on 
in this neighborhood ; that Abbeville was, in fact, a kind 
of Birmingham or Sheffield of those days. But can it 
be that in a country like France, in which chalk, with 
flint, occupies an area of forty thousand square miles, and 
where the raw material for such an important manufact- 
ure (!) was every where abundant and redundant, any 
local trade without a circulating medium could have ex- 
isted ? or was theirs a foreign commerce, carried on by 
ships made with chipped-flint implements, made without 
planks, without iron, without cordage, and navigated with- 
out sails or compass ? But in what country, geologically, 
could such manufactured articles find a market ? In the 
countries occupied by the Secondary and Tertiary forma- 
tions and the Drift-beds there could have been no buy- 
ers ; the article was every where under their feet ; it 
would have been, in common parlance, ' sending coals to 
Newcastle.' And in the lands of the older rocks, stone 
tools of a superior form are ready made by nature. The 
carbonaceous grits of North Devon are split by divisional 



58 UNDER THE TREES. 

planes and cleavage into more effective arrow-heads and 
chisel points ; and the pebble ridge of Northam would 
supply an unlimited amount of magnificent stone ham- 
mers. There could have been no demand for such man- 
ufactured tools ; and we can only infer that the commer- 
cial and speculative savages embarked in a trade which 
proved a perfect failure, and in their disgust cast away 
innumerable specimens of beautifully made tools, which 
therefore bear no marks of having been used, and with 
others so utterly rude and unformed that it requires the 
'practiced eye' to discover the marks of human work- 
manship ; and thus the good and the bad, the raw mate- 
rial and the manufactured article, are mingled in one 
chaotic mass — a record of disappointed hope, mortified 
ambition, and speculative commercial despair. Surely 
this is philosophy in sport or science run mad. Was this 
the commerce — those the ships whose flag braved for un- 
known years the battle and the breeze, when ' the arts re- 
mained stationary for almost indefinite periods.-" This 
is more like an Oriental romance, more akin to the his- 
tory of a pre-Adamite Robinson Crusoe, than the deduc- 
tions of legitimate science. It is a resuscitated Daniel 
Defoe who writes, and not the author of the Principles 
and the Manual of Geology." 



X. 

OCTOBER. 

Surely one who writes out-of-doors ought to take note 
of the seasons. Thomson wrote his poems in a rustic 
summer-house, no better than one within ten feet of my 
chair. ! was in it near Richmond Hill, and recollect the 
record on the wall : 

"HERE THOMSON SANG THE SEASONS AND THEIR CHANGE." 

But he could not have lived in that charming spot 
when he began his career as a poet, for he first wrote his 
" Winter," and went from one publisher to another trying 
to sell the manuscript that he might buy for himself a 
pair of shoes. With success as a poet he obtained pat- 
ronage and a place that gave him three hundred a year, 
which made him comfortable. His " Seasons" are among 
the pleasantest of all the English classic poems to read 
in the country. Parts of them are too sensuous for the 
more delicate tastes of our times, but Thomson had a 
soul to enjoy the beauties and glories of the country, and 
set them in his verse with a mellow melody delicious to 
read or hear. 

It is now nearly the middle of the month, and so warm 
in this latitude that it is as delightful to sit out under the 
trees and enjoy a book or a pen as it has been any time 
this summer. In the spring we often think, if we do not 
say, that we would love to have such weather all the year. 



6o UNDER THE TREES. 

But this October weather, such as we are now having, 
is more enjoyable than soft and genial May. It is cool 
and bracing. It invites to labor. Toil of mind and body 
suits the month. One feels like work, and springs to it 
with a will. To work is play when one's limbs are free, 
strong, and willing. It is a blessing that we are com- 
pelled to work, as our first parents were when they were 
put into. a garden to dress and keep it, even before they 
dressed themselves. To have nothing to do is worse than 
to have nothing to wear. 

The weather is so enjoyable that I am reminded of a 
letter I had a few days ago from an unknown friend, re- 
proving me kindly for saying in one of my recent letters 
that my equanimity of soul would be disturbed if the wind 
should turn about into the northeast and a cold storm 
should set in. He says that, although he has had a life 
of sighing, he is never disturbed by the weather, and he 
thinks I ought, like the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, to 
think that weather best which the Lord sends. And so 
I do. When bad weather drives me in, or gives me aches, 
or defeats my plans, I am afflicted ; but it is good to be 
afflicted, and so I rejoice in adversity. I am disturbed 
when things go as I would not like to have them go, and 
I do not love trouble more than other men ; but I know 
that He who orders all things, the weather as well as 
others, knows what is best on the whole, and therefore I 
take it as it comes. "When it rains, let it rain," is a 
motto that I have a hereditary right to wear under my 
coat-of-arms, for it was the motto of a father who never 
failed of an appointment on account of a storm, and al- 
ways took the world as the Lord gave it, without a mur- 
mur or a frown. To be indifferent to the weather, or to 
disappointments or crosses or trials, is not virtue nor 



OCTOBER. 6 1 

manliness. But to be patient when one's peace of mind 
is disturbed, to control the rising discontent, to refrain 
from sighing, to put on and wear a cheerful face, so that 
our vexation shall not vex others, this is virtue, and one 
who is always sighing has it not. It is easy for a man to 
make his family and his friends miserable by showing 
his own griefs and cares and little troubles that he ought 
to leave in his study or store, or out on the farm. When 
he is at home, let him be cheerful and bright, and good- 
tempered and patient, as becomes the head of the house, 
the sun in whose light and warmth all the plants should 
rejoice and shine. 

But where were we ? October : it is not likely that we 
shall forget it, for the evidences are all around us that 
the days of autumn have come. The chestnuts are drop- 
ping around me as I write, though as yet we have had no 
frost to open the burrs, which do not wait for that, but 
burst when the nuts are ripe and ready for harvest. The 
squirrels are busy for their share, and we suffer no dis- 
turbing stone or gun to dispute their right to all they can 
get. Two wild pigeons just now came into the tree un- 
der which I am sitting — beautiful birds ; and after hold- 
ing a short conversation, they flew away. Thousands of 
them are now on the wing to a warmer clime. They need 
not hasten, for the weather is mild enough for them yet, 
and they can fly to the South in a single day whenever 
they choose to make the journey. 

Many of the forest trees have already put on their 
proud autumnal dress ; the maples and beeches and oaks 
have begun to change. The second growth of late sum- 
mer and early fall, which is rarely noted but is always ob- 
servable, is now losing its distinctive hue. Along in July 
a fresh impulse seems to be given to the sap in shrubs 



62 UNDER THE TREES. 

and trees, and you will see that a new growth starts up 
with a tender, delicate green like early spring ; and this 
lies, another color, like a streak of sunshine on a darker 
brown of the other foliage. It is now all alike. And 
how radiant is that maple-tree in its scarlet robe ! And 
here is a tree that was lately a deep green, now suddenly 
clothed in yellow from the ground to its crown. Some 
of the very fanciful landscapers have endeavored to pro- 
duce wonderful effects of beauty by setting out trees in 
regular succession of autumnal colors, to have them in 
the order of the spectrum as nearly as may be, improving 
upon the arrangement of nature. The effect is far from 
satisfactory. To paint the lily or the rose would be as 
wise as to make a forest of colors by any law of the 
schools. As the heavens declare the glory of God, so 
the mountains and forests display his taste and skill. 
He makes them living pictures ; arranging the lights and 
shades and hues with infinite art, himself the artist whom 
no rival can reach. To paint like him would be too 
much glory for any man. To be like him is more ; yet 
this is what the humblest may. To see his beauty in 
these autumn leaves is great. Yet we may have more ; 
we shall be like him. for we shall see him as he is. 



XL 

A FRIEND'S VISIT. 

We have just parted from a friend whd has been spend- 
ing a few days with us under the trees. Poets have sung 
the pleasures of soUtude, and if there were any place in 
the world where a man might be alone, yet not alone, it 
would be this secluded woodside, where the sky looks 
down on us as a constant benediction of Providence, and 
the river lives and moves and smiles continually at our 
feet, and the old trees lift up their branches in perpetual 
psalms. This is solitude in the midst of nature's voices, 
with God all around us in his unwritten word, speaking 
in the sunshine and the showers, the flowers, the fruits, 
the growth of every thing, and now in the ripening and 
the fall of leaves that tell us autumn has come and winter 
is nigh. Solitude is scarcely solitary here, where every 
blade of grass and every oak and pine are companions, 
as well as the little rabbit that sports in the walk and flies 
at my coming, as he would not if he knew me better ; and 
the squirrel who shares the nuts, and establishes his dwell- 
ing among them to make sure of his portion. With all 
this company, and that other " bliss of Paradise that es- 
caped the fall," I had been longing for the sight and 
voice of a friend whose presence is always like that of 
the sun. 

And so he came. Thanks be to God for friends. 
Thanks be to him for one friend ; for one with whom 



64 UNDER THE TREES. 

sweet counsel can be taken in the retirement of one's 
own house and heart ; one friend to whom you may tell 
all your plans and hopes and fears ; who will share his 
with you, and make the world brighter and life's burden 
lighter, because his sympathy and his experience and his 
wisdom make up for your weakness and want of faith. 
It is a grand error, too, that friendship is less sweet in 
later life, and even in old age, than in the sunny times of 
youth. Two of the early pieces of Latin that I had to 
write into English were Cicero on Friendship and on Old 
Age, and the fine philosophy that glowed in those beauti- 
ful pages has been a life-long pleasure. Nothing in the 
poetry or prose of man's life on earth is more lovely than 
a virtuous old age cheered with the friendship of the wise 
and good. And why should any sensible man be averse 
to old age, and strive to hide from himself and others that 
he is advanced in years ? If his days are crowned with 
goodness, and his mind is a storehouse in which the har- 
vests of successive years have been garnered, and the law 
of kindness is on his lips, and love throws its arms around 
him, or plays at his knees, and hope opens heaven on his 
eye, and peace dwells in his soul — a foretaste of the rest 
that remains for him when his pilgrimage is closed — why 
should not old age be the happiest, cosiest, loveliest sea 
son of the life on earth ? The heart never grows old, and 
out of the heart are the issues of life. The soul never 
grows old, and the soul is the man. This poor, aching 
frame of ours is not the thing that is to be, and not the 
thing that is, if we reckon by the power to be, to do, to 
suffer, and to enjoy. The life in us is the life of the soul; 
that loves, learns, hopes, rejoices in the smile of God and 
friends, and lives the most "when this poor stamn^ering 
tongue lies silent in the grave." 



A friend's visit. 65 

Our friend who came to see us you would not dare to 
call an old man. Even the hand of time has dealt so ten- 
derly with him that not a wrinkle furrows his brow, and 
his hair is brown as a boy's, though he tells us he was 
born in the last century, and we are bound to believe him, 
as he is the soul of truth. Yet why not speak of him as 
old, for he has all that helps to make a man revered, and 
years enough to make him venerable have flown over him, 
if they have not shed the frosts of their winters on his 
head. It has been summer with him always, and his 
heart is warm now. He brought with him whatever 
makes life a charm and blessing. Genial, cheerful, so- 
cial, his mind is stored with all manner of pleasant mem- 
ories of men and places, things and scenes, in the Old 
World and our own, for few men have read more, traveled 
more abroad and at home, met more of those men and 
women whom the world loves to talk of and remember ; 
few have written more, and as reading makes a full man, 
writing a correct man, conversation a ready man, and 
society an accomplished man, our friend should have 
brought with him the means of enlightening the darkness 
and enlivening the dullness of our woods; and he did. 
And over all the charms of intercourse with one so richly 
furnished with the stores of learning and gifts of graceful 
culture, the higher and purer beauty of religion shone in 
every word and way. 

How sweet the hours, the days, in such society ! How 
rich the flow of thought and feeling that came from his 
lips like a river of delight, as he spoke of former times, of 
great and good men now conversing with the angels in 
heaven ; of books, that inexhaustible fountain of instruc- 
tion and delight when congenial minds wander without 
method from one to another, over the fields of ancient 

E 



66 UNDER THE TREES. 

and modern times ; yes, and of books that are to be, or 
that might be and ought to be, that the world is waiting 
for, and would welcome with favor if the man to make 
them would come and do the work ; of art, whose plastic 
hand has made beauty a household treasure, and adorned 
the world with fair creations that delight the eye of taste, 
and stand from age to age the monuments of genius ; of 
nature lying in her loveliness all about us, her summer 
garments just now exchanged for the richer robes of au- 
tumn ; the grand old trees stretching their protecting arms 
abroad, as if they loved to fold us in their embrace ; rich, 
ripe fruit pendant from many a vine and branch, telling 
of the bounty of the Universal Father, blessed forever, 
whose love and skill appear in every leaf and ray ; of 
friends, and those who are bound to us by sweeter names, 
whose love is the balm of all life's sorrow, and the fullness, 
in itself, of life's every joy. 

In such discourse the hours went swiftly by, till the 
time for his departure came. Too soon, but still it came. 
And when he left us, it was as if half the world had gone, 
so great the void and our regret. 

" When one that holds communion with the skies, 
Has filled his urn where these pure waters rise, 
And once more mingles with us meaner things, 
'Tis e'en as if an angel shook his wings ; 
Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide 
That tells us whence his treasures are supplied." 

He has left precious memories. We are glad that he 
has been here, even while we miss him from these famil- 
iar seats and walks. His form, his smile, his words of 
wisdom and affection are now linked with all we see. 
Here he sat. there we walked ; here he told us of one 
whom we had known in another land, now in another 



A friend's visit. 67 

world, and here we laid out work for future years. Each 
step and tree and scene will remind us of him. He is 
part of us and ours. And when he was away out of 
sight and hearing, I sat down in an old rustic chair that 
he had been sitting in an hour before, and I said — 

" What are meetings here but partings ? 
\Vhat are ecstasies but smartings? 
Union what but separations ? 
What attachments but vexations? 

Every smile but brings it§ tear, 

Love its ache and hope its fear; 

All that's sweet must bitter prove ; 

All we hold most dear remove ! 

" Heavenward rise ! 'tis Heaven in kindness 
Mars our bliss to heal our blindness ; 
Hope from vanity to sever, 
Offering joys that bloom forever. 

In that amaranthine clime, 

Far above the tears of time, 

Where nor fear nor hope intrude, 

Lost in pure beatitude." 



XII. 

CONVERSATION. 

Thj; savor of his conversation lingers so pleasingly. 
He has the happy faculty of saying the right thing at the 
right time, and that is high art. It is the art of conver- 
sation, a rare accomplishment, attained by few because it 
is thought to come of itself, and not to be sought, studied, 
and cultivated, as music or dancing is by those who would 
excel in either. Probably it does come of itself, but only 
to one who is well read, ready, and full of practice. It 
grows upon a man doubtless, unconsciously to himself 
but not to his friends, and they delight in him when he is 
quite unaware of the pleasure he is conferring. 

Our friend who has just left us has had the best oppor- 
tunity of becoming perfect in this art. He has read 
much, written much, traveled much, met the best, wisest, 
and greatest men in our own and other lands, listened to 
them, talked to and with them, and remembers every body 
and every thing, so that he illustrates his conversation 
with frequent anecdote and incident, quotes correctly sen- 
tences from speeches, sermons, and books, imitates the 
manner of the speaker admirably, giving a passage from 
Everett or Robert Hall, Channing or Webster, so that 
you might imagine the orators themselves before you, and 
this discourse, flowing easily from lively to severe, is sea- 
soned with salt, sometimes Attic, always to the taste of 
the company, never flagging, never wearying, always rest- 



CONVERSATION. 69 

ing when others have any thing to say, and listening with 
graceful attention when they speak, and — but this sen- 
tence is long and must come to an end. 

We have traditions and records of men who were great 
in conversation, as Dr. Johnson and Coleridge, but they 
were not strictly conversationists. The idea of con-vers- 
ing is a mutual interchange of thought, a reciprocation of 
ideas ; there is little of this in Johnson, who was so dog- 
matical as scarcely to allow any one else to have an opin- 
ion, certainly not to express it in his presence without re- 
buke. He was a tyrant among his friends, autocrat of 
the dinner-table, and a bear always. Goldsmith said of 
him, " If his pistol missed fire, he knocked you down with 
the butt end of it." Yet some of his contemporaries tell 
us that he led people about him to talk of the matters 
with which they were the most familiar, and so became 
possessed of their information. In this way he pleased 
them, by making them think they pleased him. 

Coleridge discoursed rather than conversed. His con- 
versation was like the handle of the teapot, all on one 
side. Dr. Dibdin, dining at the same table with him, de- 
scribes his manner : " He rolled himself up, as it were, in 
his chair, and gave the most unrestrained indulgence to 
his speech ; and how fraught with acuteness and origi- 
nality was that speech, and in what copious and eloquent 
periods did it flow ! The auditors seemed rapt in won- 
der and delight, as one observation more profound or 
clothed in more forcible language than another fell from 
his tongue. He spoke for nearly two hours with unhesi- 
tating and uninterrupted fluency. Thinking and speak- 
ing were his delight, and he would sometimes seem, dur- 
ing the most fervid moments of discourse, to be abstract- 
ed from all and every thing about him, and to be basking 



7© UNDER THE TREES. 

in the sunny warmth of his own radiant imagination." 
This is not the art of conversation — it is the art of speak- 
ing. It is not the entertainment of the social hour, but 
the very thing for the lecture-room. It justifies the reply 
of Charles Lamb to Coleridge, who said to him, " Did you 
ever hear me preach ?" Lamb replied, " I never heard 
you do any thing else." Coleridge began public life as a 
preacher. He soon left the pulpit, but he continued to 
discourse daily while he lived. Perhaps no man ever ex- 
celled him in the power of expressing great thoughts in 
the happiest manner without premeditation. 

Of all the men whom I have had the pleasure of meet- 
ing in social life, no one has conversational powers su- 
perior, if equal, to Mr. Kinney, our late Minister at Turin, 
when Italy was not as now under one king. Without 
dogmatism or pedantry, he gives expression to the stores 
of a richly furnished mind in language at once simple 
and eloquent ; fluently putting forth his thoughts in 
the readiest but best chosen words, with energy, yet 
with courtesy and deference. His earnestness is infec- 
tious. He rouses those about him to speak as well as to 
hear, and thus his discourse soon becomes the animated 
and delightful converse of the social circle. One even- 
ing — I remember it well — a shallow free-thinker in a 
brilliant circle in Florence had been speaking lightly of 
some of the truths of religion because to him they were 
unintelligible ; he added, " I will never believe any thing 
that I can not understand." " And pray tell us," said 
Mr. Kinney, "what you do undersfa?id V The man was 
confounded by the suddenness of the demand, and Mr. 
Kinney proceeded with great calmness but with a wealth 
of illustration and logical force to show that we under- 
stand little or nothing of the simplest and commonest 



CONVERSATION, 7 1 

things which we do not hesitate to believe — the relations 
of mind and matter — the phenomena of the world of nat- 
ure — even principles in art, by which grand results are 
reached, and which we do not refuse to apply, are all be- 
yond our power to comprehend. Yet this rebuke and in- 
struction were conveyed in terms so graceful and engag- 
ing that the pleasure overcame our pity for the man who 
had invited such a criticism. 

There is this marked difference in conversation among 
cultivated people abroad and at home, that here the opin- 
ions of others are challenged with greater freedom and 
opposed with more bluntness, while abroad dissent is 
rather implied than asserted. Here men oftener discuss 
than converse. There the interchange of opinion and in- 
formation is made as if all were on the same side, and 
each was seeking to learn rather than to teach. Yet this 
is not peculiar to conversational circles. Social inter- 
course has much less friction there than with us. Society 
is tolerant of opinion, and policy controls the words of 
men and women more than it does here, where every man 
thinks he is as good as his neighbor, if not a little better. 
Chesterfield is supreme in the law of manners abroad, 
and a sin against good-breeding is worse, in many of the 
higher spheres, than a crime in morals. The advantage 
is with us on the score of honesty, frankness, sincerity, 
but with them in the matter of ease, gracefulness, and so- 
cial pleasure. We ought to reach perfection in both and 
all. It is a pity that civilization tends in any way or de- 
gree to make society insincere. But the more that men 
learn to regard language as intended to "conceal their 
thoughts," the less honest they become, and more like 
politicians and diplomats than statesmen, scholars, and 
friends. 



72 UNDER THE TREES. 

'Of the social circle he is the life and charm whose 
mind is stored with knowledge of matters and things in 
general, conversant with the past and present — history, 
poetry, and philosophy : who has a memory ready to an- 
swer instantly every call, with anecdote to illustrate, wit 
to enliven, and fluency to speak ; is patient of contradic- 
tion, and full of gentleness, goodness, and truth. 



XIII. 

AUTHORS. 

Next to reading good books, we enjoy reading about 
the authors of them. It is the next best thing to know- 
ing them. Indeed, it is often better. For. we are some- 
times so sadly disappointed when we come to meet peo- 
ple of whom we have read and heard much, that we are 
rather sorry than otherwise we have had " the pleasure 
of their acquaintance." Even St. Paul anticipated this 
when he spoke of his " weighty " epistles, and his bodily 
presence "weak and contemptible." Something in the 
style or something we have heard helps us to an image 
of the author's person, and then of his manner, and it is 
painful to have this illusion dispelled. At the annual 
Literary Fund Dinner in London, I met a large number 
of eminent authors. I was disenchanted. Many of them 
were totally different from the ideal. The little child 
who was held up to a window in Newport to look in at 
George Washington, expressed the almost universal feel- 
ing on one's first sight of a hero, "Why he's only a man." 

And men are not always the same, so that the accounts 
we have of them are as diverse as their sketches. M. 
Ampere says of M. de Tocqueville, who was remarkable 
for the purity of his language in the most familiar conver- 
sation : ." While sitting on the rocks around Sorrento, I 
might have written down (and why did I not?) all that 
escaped his lips in those moments of friendly intercourse." 



74 UNDER THE TREES. 

It SO happens that I have enjoyed familiar converse with 
the same illustrious author, philosopher, and statesman, 
M. de Tocqueville, and, singularly indeed, under similar 
circumstances ; we were sitting, not " on the rocks around 
Sorrento," but on a rail fence overlooking this Hudson 
River ; and then and there the French author referred to 
the identical scenery he was perusing when M. Ampere 
and he were conversing, for he said to me, "We will ex- 
cept the Bay of Naples out of deference to the opinion of 
the world, but, after that, I never saw a moVe beautiful 
scene than this." I was not impressed by the style of 
his conversation, as Ampere was, but it was doubtless 
owing to the fact that he spoke with me in English, while 
he and Ampere were of course using their own beautiful 
language. 

Guizot says of Gibbon that his great conversational de- 
fect was a studied arrangement of his words — that he talk- 
ed like a book. I have heard Guizot talk, and his words 
flow as readily as if they were in his memory, and not to 
be found for the occasion. The most learned men are 
not the most fluent in conversation. Christopher North 
ridicules a dinner-table distinguished by the literary type 
of its guests. " Even poets," he says, " are a sulky set, and 
as gruflfly and grimly silent as if they had the toothache 
or something the matter wi' their inside." Sir Walter 
Scott could not endure the "little exclusive circles of 
literary society." "He often complained," says Jacox, 
" of the real dullness of parties where each guest arrived 
under the implied and tacit obligation of exhibiting some 
extraordinary powers of talk or wit." 

Emerson is one of the profoundest thinkers, but he is 
very simple in his conversation ; he is childlike in his 
simplicity, or, to use his own words speaking of another, 



AUTHORS. 75 

he is "grandly simple." I have listened to him wonder- 
ing that while the depths are so great there is so little on 
the surface, yet that little so beautiful. 

The most learned woman it was ever my good-fortune 
to meet, and probably the most learned woman who ever 
lived, was Mrs. Somerville, the mathematician, astrono- 
mer, and philosopher. In fact, she was encyclopedic. 
She but recently died at the age of about ninety, for 
she was born in 1780. It was in 1853 I met her in Flor- 
ence, and she was therefore then seventy-three years old, 
and in the prime of life and mental vigor. Her bust in 
marble had before that time been placed by the side of 
Sir Isaac Newton's, and no one more justly deserves the 
honor. But she was as simply natural and as easily 
graceful in her conversation as if she had never calcu- 
lated an eclipse since she was the reigning belle in Scot- 
land, admired for her beauty and accomplishments, but 
not suspected of genius or learning, and unthinking of 
fame. 

Horace Walpole quotes with fondness the remark of 
one of Fanny Burney's friends : " I made a resolution 
early never to be acquainted with authors — they are so 
vain and so troublesome." And Jeffrey said of London 
society, " The literary men, I acknowledge, excite my 
reverence the least." It is often the case that the very 
pressure both of wisdom and knowledge shuts the mouth. 
To say any thing worth saying is far more of an under- 
taking for a wise man than a fool. Fools rush in, or out, 
where angels fear to tread. Mrs. E. B. Browning says : 
" How many are there, from Psellus to Bayle, bound hand 
and foot intellectually with the rolls of their own papyrus 
— men whose erudition has grown stronger than their 
souls." But Mrs, Browning was herself an illustration of 



76 UNDER THE TREES. 

the truth that one may be full of thought, reading, and 
genius, and as readily social and agreeable as if she were 
no greater than those with whom she conversed. Thus 
she appeared to me in society, when poets and artists 
hovered around her, and again in her own Casa Guidi, 
with a few friends near her, her only child at her knee, 
looking up reverently into her sad face. 

One of the most genial and pleasant old men I ever 
met of the race of authors was the poet James Mont- 
gomery. He was so old when I saw him in his own house 
in Sheffield that I would not have looked for vivacity and 
humor in his conversation, but he was very lively in his 
manner ; and when he gave me his birthday, and it proved 
to be mine also, and then his age, which was the double 
of mine to a day, the coincidences were welcomed with 
mutual and great delight. 

Ready writing is written down as one of the greatest 
accomplishments, and yet it is a serious question whether 
it is in the long run as desirable a talent as the want of 
it. When a great painter, whose name is now almost 
unknown to fame, was boasting of the celerity with which 
he dispatched his work, Zeuxis, whose name still lives 
among the arts, replied, " If I boast, it shall be of the 
slowness with which I finish mine." 

Preachers who write their sermons gain little and lose 
much by dashing off their discourses with railroad speed. 
Haste makes waste, and a dreary waste it is that is spread 
out before a people whose teacher brings to them on a 
Sunday that which has cost him nothing through the 
week. A minister neighbor of mine was in my house 
until nearly bed-time Saturday night, and when he rose 
to go, remarked : " I've half a sermon yet to write for to- 
morrow ; don't you feel sorry for me ?" 



AUTHORS. 77 

" Oh no," said I, " not for you ; I was thinking of the 
people." 

The Rev. Dr. Sprague is the only man I ever knew 
who can write his best, and that first rate, and at the same 
time with great rapidity. As reading makes a full man, 
conversation a ready man, and writing a correct man, he 
is always full, ready, and correct, and the words flow from 
his pen in one steady, easy, pellucid stream. He rarely 
changes a word. I have had hundreds, perhaps thousands 
of his pages of manuscript under my hands for publica- 
tion ; they were the first draft, and very rarely was the 
beauty of the page marred by an erasure or emendation. 
He began his great work, " The Annals of the American 
Pulpit," ten octavo volumes, when he was fifty-seven years 
old, and in the midst of the duties of a large pastoral 
charge, he never slighted a discourse, and once or twice 
a year he visited every house in his parish. 

Dr. Griffin was one of the most eloquent preachers in 
the American pulpit. Dr. Sprague edited his sermons 
and wrote his biography. Dr. Griffin was the exact re- 
verse of Dr. Sprague in composition : writing slowly, and 
correcting with much labor and care. When I was a boy 
in college he was its President, and my puerile composi- 
tions were laid upon the table before him, while he without 
pity blotted them with a broad-nibbed pen, until there 
was no likeness of the original page to be seen. He kept 
two pens at hand, one to strike out with, the other to re- 
store. " The great art in criticism," he would say, " is to 
blot." And if a pet curl adorned the fair face of my es- 
say, he without remorse and with apparent pleasure cut 
it off and cast it from me as if it were an offense. The 
late Dr. Murray (Kirwan), whose head came to the same 
block before mine, has left his testimony to the value of 



78 UNDER THE TREES. 

Dr. Griffin's butchery as a critic and example as an au- 
thor. " Young gentlemen," Dr. Griffin often said to us, 
"learn to stop when you are done." 

Southey was a rapid writer, but found that what he 
gained in time he lost in polish and correctness. When 
one of his poems was finished, he would not give it to the 
printer, but wrote : " I am polishing and polishing, and 
hewing it to pieces with surgeon severity. Yesterday I 
drew the pen across six hundred lines." And again he 
says: "It is long since I have been a rapid writer; the 
care with which I write, and the pains which I take in col- 
lecting materials, render it impossible that I should be so." 

Dr. Johnson advised every young man beginning to 
compose, to do it as fast as he could, to get a habit of 
having his mind start promptly — " so much more difficult 
is it to improve in speed than in accuracy." But Dr. 
Johnson was one of the most unwise wise men that ever 
lived. He was a bundle of contradictions, and said a 
great many things for the sake of contradiction. " I 
would say to a young divine," says Dr. Johnson, "' Here is 
your text ; let us see how soon you can make a sermon.' 
Then I'd say, ' Let me see how much better you can 
make it.' Thus I should see both his powers and his 
judgment." 

" Easy writing is very hard reading." And it is the 
easy reading, that which gives the most lasting as well as 
immediate pleasure to the reader, which has cost the 
writer the most labor. If he have the art to conceal his 
art, so that what is read or heard with the greatest delight 
seems to have leaped like Minerva from the brain in full 
dress and strength, so much the better ; but as a general 
rule in the matter of writing, as in all other of the works 
of nv3,n, that which costs nothing is worth nothing. 



AUTHORS. 79 

Milton's "Lycidas" was rewritten again and again; his 
biographer says he hovered over the " rathe primrose " 
passage with fastidious fondness, touching every color 
and fitting every word till he brought it to its present per- 
fection of beauty. 

The fastidiousness of authorship is ridiculed by some, 
like Cobbett, who said, " Never think of what you write ; 
let it go — no patching." And Niebuhr's rule was, " Try 
never to strike out any part of what you have once writ- 
ten down." But such advice never made an author im- 
mortal. It may have helped him to sudden fame, and 
perhaps fortune, but usefulness and the " monumentum 
aere perennius," for which the best of men may strive, are 
not to be achieved without patient work, painstaking — 
labor limge ; and the reward is worth all it costs. 



XIV. 

DOGS. 

We have been in mourning, if not in tears to-day. My 
son left us yesterday to go to Europe, and a favorite dog 
of his, a little fellow, "took on" dreadfully when his master 
went away. For several days, while preparations for the 
journey were in progress, the dog manifested great anx- 
iety, watching the packing and listening to the conversa- 
tion with evident uneasiness. The day of departure 
came. The dog was shut up in a room alone, and howled 
dolefully. Night came, and he wandered about the house, 
up and down stairs — though his rug was lying ready for 
him as usual by his master's empty bed. He had dis- 
turbed me in the early part of the night by his whines as 
he sought his master in vain. In the morning I went 
into his room, and found him asleep on his rug. He 
never awoke again. The dog was dead. 

After breakfast we buried him under the trees, and a 
feeling of increased loneliness has settled on the house. 
We miss them both, and the thought of the love the dog 
had for his master — love stronger than life — touches us 
tenderly. We hope to see the son return. The dog had 
no hope, and died. 

General Webb gave a little dog to the child of one of 
our neighbors, a friend of his. The child and the dog 
became tenderly attached to each other. The child was 
taken ill. The dog lavished its affections on its friend. 



DOGS. 51 

caressing him constantly, and showing the strongest anx- 
iety. The child died. The dog walked away from the 
bed to the other side of the room, lay down and died also. 

My father had a small and beautiful dog who rejoiced 
in the name of Fidelity. He differed from other good 
dogs only in being better than others, and in manifesting 
something that resembled religious sensibility, or a pecul- 
iar attachment to religious places, people, and services. 
He attended family worship with a punctuality and regu- 
larity that the other members of the household might well 
have imitated, and certainly did not surpass. If a stran- 
ger were present — and much company visited our house — 
the dog's attention to him was regulated by his taking 
the lead or not in the religious worship of the household. 
If the visitor at my father's request conducted the wor- 
ship, the dog at once attached himself to his person, and 
when he departed the dog escorted him put of the vil- 
lage ; sometimes going home with him to a neighboring 
town, and making him a visit of a few days. If the visitor 
did not perform any religious service in the house, the 
dog took no notice of him while there, and suffered him 
to depart unattended and evidently unregretted. 

Such a dog was, of course, an habitual attendant on the 
public services of the church on the Sabbath. It re- 
quired extraordinary care to keep him at home. Shut up 
in a room, he dashed through a window and was at church 
before the family. He was once shut up in an outhouse 
that had no floor. He dug out under the sill of the door, 
and was at church before the first psalm was sung. In 
church he occupied the upper step of the pulpit within 
which his master ministered. He lay quiet during the 
service unless other dogs below misbehaved, in which 
case he left his seat, and after quieting the disturbance 

F 



82 UNDER THE TREES. 

resumed it. He was equally devoted to the weekly 
prayer-meeting which was held from house to house, the 
appointment being announced on the Sabbath. He re- 
membered the evening and the place, and was always 
present. As it was not agreeable to have a dog at an 
evening meeting in a private house, he was confined at 
home. The next week he went early, before the family 
had thought to shut him up, and waited for the hour and 
the people. He knew the names of the families where 
the meetings were held, and where they lived, and could 
have gone to any one of them on an errand as easily and 
correctly as a child. And the only knowledge he had of 
the place of meeting he got as the others did, by hearing 
the notice on Sunday. These habits of the dog were not 
the fruit of education. On the contrary, pains were taken 
to prevent him from indulging his religious preferences. 
He did not manifest a fondness for other meetings, or for 
any individuals out of the family circle except those 
whom he recognized by their habit of praying, as the peo- 
ple in whom he was especially interested. 

My father was wont to relate many other anecdotes of 
this remarkable animal, and the relation of them always 
caused his eyes to fill with tears. He had a strong im- 
pression that there was something very mysterious about 
this propensity of the dog, and being himself a sternly 
orthodox divine, he never ventured to express the opinion 
that the dog had moral perceptions. But I always thought 
he believed so. 

I have heard and read many stories of dogs that go 
to show a moral sense. Dr. Guthrie, the great Scotch 
preacher, relates some incidents in the life of his dog 
Bob: 

" Though but a dumb companion and friend," he says, 



DOGS. 83 

" I must devote a few lines to the memory and affection 
and sense of my dog Bob, who, lying often at the head 
of the pulpit stairs, occupied a place on Sundays nearly 
as conspicuous as myself He was a magnificent Scotch 
dog of great size, brave as, or rather braver than a lion. 
He expressed his respect for decent and well-conditioned 
visitors by rushing to the gate as if he were bent on de- 
vouring them, and gave them a welcome both with tail 
and tongue. Beggars, and all such characters, he wasted 
no wind on ; but, maintaining an ominous silence, stuck 
close to their heels, showing a beautiful set of teeth, and 
occasionally using them ; only, however, to warn the gang- 
rels to be on their behavior. 

" He had but one bad habit when I had him — to see a 
cat was to fly at it. This ended in his worrying to death 
a favorite grimalkin belonging to a neighbor, and the ca- 
tastrophe raised a formidable commotion. I saw that I 
must part with Bob or impair my usefulness ; so, with 
many regrets, I sent him to Brechin, fifteen miles off. 

" There, early on the following Sunday morning, Bob 
was observed, with head and tail erect and a resolute 
purpose in every look and movement, taking his way from 
my brother's house. My brother's wife, struck with his 
air, said to one of her daughters, who laughed at the idea, 
' There is Bob, and I'll wager he is off to Arbirlot !' 
Whether he had kept the road, or gone by some myste- 
rious path across the country straight as the crow flies, I 
know not ; but when I was leaving the church, about one 
o'clock, I was met by the beadle, with his old face lighted 
up with an unusual expression of glee, and exclaiming — 
for my dog and Johnny had been always fast friends — 
'You manna put him awa', minister, though he should 
worry a' the cats in the parish !' 



84 UNDER THE TREES. 

" On going to the manse, I found Bob outside the gate, 
as flat, prostrate, and motionless as if he had been stone 
dead. It was plain he knew as well as I did that he had 
been banished, and had returned without leave, and was 
liable to be hanged, drowned, shot, or otherwise punished 
at my will. I went up to him, and stood over him for a 
while in ominous silence. No wagging of his tail, or 
movement in any limb ; but there he lay, as if he had been 
killed and flattened by a heavy roller, only that, with his 
large, beautiful eyes half shut, he kept winking and look- 
ing up in my face with a most pitiful and penitent and 
pleading expression in his own. 

" Though I might not go the length of old Johnny 
Bowman in making free of all the cats in the parish, there 
was no resisting the dumb but eloquent appeal. I gave 
way, and exclaimed in cheerful tones, 'Is this you. Bob?' 
In an instant, knowing that he was forgiven and restored, 
he rose at one mighty bound into the air, circling round 
and round me, and ever and anon, in the power and full- 
ness of his joy, leaping nearly over my head. 

"What his ideas of right and wrong were I dare not 
say, but he certainly had a sense of shame, and apparent- 
ly also of guilt. Once, for example — and the only occa- 
sion on which we knew him to steal — Mrs. Guthrie came 
unexpectedly on Bob sneaking out of the kitchen with a 
sheep's head between his teeth. His jail-like and timor- 
ous look displayed conscious guilt; and still more, before 
she had time to speak a word, what he did. The mo- 
ment he saw her, as if struck with paralysis, he drops the 
sheep's head on the floor, and, with his tail between his 
legs, makes off with all haste, not to escape a beating, for 
she never ventured on that, but to hide his shame." 

P. G. Hamerton is an English author of fine taste and 



DOGS. 85 

accomplishments, who discusses the subject of intellect 
in dumb animals with much ability and fine illustration. 
Some very able papers have recently appeared in foreign 
reviews on the same question. Mr. Hamerton has a paper 
on dogs, which he prefaces with a note : "There is so much 
in this paper which must naturally seem incredible;" and 
then he pledges "his honor" for the truth of what he 
tells. He then gives a detailed account of two perform- 
ing dogs that had been trained by a man who had been 
a teacher in a deaf and dumb institution, and had thus 
been led to inquire how far similar education might reach 
the intelligence of dogs. These dogs would spell any 
common word proposed to them ; would give the plural 
of a word when the singular was proposed. They would 
give the French for any English or German word in which 
the same letter did not occur twice ; they would detect 
an error in any word spelled incorrectly, and point out 
the wrong letter, and bring the right one to go in its place ; 
and questions in mental arithmetic were solved with cor- 
rectness. The master left the room, and Mr. Hamerton 
proposed questions which were promptly answered by 
the dogs. The two dogs played a game of dominoes; and 
when unable to match, drew from the bank with great re- 
luctance and went on. 

The Rev. Dr. Wickam, of Manchester, Vermont, has 
told me of a dog which belongs to a good deacon of 
that place. 

" At the stroke of the bell each Sabbath morning, unless 
forcibly restrained, this dog would hasten with all speed 
to the church, and take his position on the broad stair of 
the steps ascending to the pulpit, and there recline at his 
ease, remaining quiet during the public service. By the 
kind sufferance of the minister who then occupied the 



86 UNDER THE TREES. 

pulpit, he was never disturbed. But on the accession of 
another to the pastorate, to whom the proximity of this 
animal was unwelcome, he was once and again dislodged 
by a kick from his position as the minister ascended the 
pulpit stairs. Upon the repetition of this indignity he 
came no more, but regularly as the Sabbath returned 
passed by the door of the church he had attended to an- 
other of a different denomination nearly two miles dis- 
tant from the former. He continued to do this for the 
space of nearly three years. At the end of that time, on 
the accession of a new minister, he was seen in his old 
position on the pulpit stairs. Being undisturbed, though 
his church-going habit remained, he went no more to the 
distant church ; but for the residue of his short life punc- 
tually attended where he had done before, and where his 
owner and family were stated worshipers." 

The Rev. Mr. Buckingham, of Ohio, is my authority for 
the following : 

" A few days after my third child was born (July, 1845), 
a little boy brought as a present to the child a black 
puppy. As he grew he became exceedingly playful, full 
of fun and life, barking at every thing and every person 
that came about the house. A mutual attachment was 
formed between the dog and the child. At nine months 
of age the child was taken with spasms. As soon as 
'Coly' (that was the name we gave the dog) knew that 
the child was sick, his whole demeanor changed. He 
seemed sad, would not eat as usual, and ceased to notice 
those who came to the house. We never heard him bark 
after he knew the child was sick. During the sickness 
of the child (about forty-eight hours) he often came into 
the room where she was lying, would go to the cradle, 
and, putting his front paws upon the side of the cradle, 



DOGS. 87 

look over into her face with the deepest interest, and then 
go out and lie down upon his rug at the door sorrowful. 
When the child died and was dressed for the grave, ' Coly ' 
came into the bedroom, licked the cold face of the child, 
and then went out, lay down in the corn-crib, refused to 
eat or drink, and in a few hours I found him dead. 

"In the fall of 1836 I started from my father's, in New- 
ark, Ohio, to go to Circleville and Chillicothe — to Circle- 
ville on a courting expedition, and to Chillicothe to preach 
in the First Presbyterian Church. My father had a large 
yellow dog, who persisted in making the trip with me. I 
reached Chillicothe on Saturday afternoon, and put up at 
a hotel. Sabbath morning, fearing that my dog would 
follow me to the church, I requested the landlord to shut 
him up. He was confined in an outhouse. At tea-time 
he was safe, but when I returned to the hotel after the 
evening services I found the dog gone. I saw no more 
of him until my return to my father's, where I found him. 
On inquiry, I learned that he was found in the stalls on 
Monday morning, the day after he escaped from the hotel 
in Chillicothe. The distance between the two places is 
some seventy miles." 

A Virginia gentleman tells me of three remarkable dogs : 
"In 1850 odd my brother (still living in New Orleans) 
was a lieutenant in the United States Army, stationed at 
one of the forts in Boston Harbor. He was presented by 
the captain of a coaster, trading at that port, with two 
dogs — one a bull -terrier, named Dinky, and the other a 
beautiful Newfoundland (or Nova Scotian) dog, which 
he named Junot, after the French marshal. Some one 
else presented him with a splendid mastiff, which he 
named Duroc, after another of the marshals. During a 
leave of absence, he brought these three dogs with him to 



88 UNDER THE TREES. 

Richmond, Virginia, where his father and a large family 
resided. Dinky was milk white all over, and though 
beautifully made as to his body and limbs, could not be 
considered handsome about the face and head — a de- 
ficiency of beauty common to his tribe. When Dinky 
was presented to my brother, he had just emerged from 
a mortal combat with a dog much larger than himself, 
in the course of which his side was torn open. The 
captain was much attached to him ; but despairing of his 
life, and landing at the wharf of the fort, parted with him 
to my brother on condition that he saved his life. He 
carried him in and invoked the services of the surgeon 
of the fort (Dr. Murray, I believe). Dinky was laid on 
the operating table, his wounds dressed, and his side 
sewed up. Though he suffered greatly from the opera- 
tion, he seemed to appreciate it, and endured it both 
patiently and, apparently, gratefully. In due time he re- 
covered, but he never became a Quaker. His belligerency 
was universal. He fought bulls, boars, dogs, snakes, bees, 
wasps, hornets, the streams of water from fire-engines, or 
any thing else that came to hand, without the slightest 
regard to odds. It was the most irresistibly laughable 
thing to see him surrounded by bees, wasps, or hornets — 
his eyes blazing, his jaws snapping like castanets perpet- 
ually ; and, though stung all over, indomitably standing 
his ground, until the spectators would leave and call him 
away for his own sake. He would then consider the bat- 
tle ended ; otherwise he seemed always to prefer death to 
defeat. In the course of his life he killed, as I have been 
told, several dogs with which he engaged in casual fights, 
and he himself was often in the hands of the surgeon ; 
but he was never, to my knowledge, engaged in a dog-pit 
or the like. And yet with all this, his affection for his 



DOGS. 89 

human friends, who treated him kindly, and for Junot 
alone, of the dog kind, was enthusiastic, and sometimes 
even affecting. In truth, strange as it may seem, he 
was the most fascinating dog I ever saw. So much for 
Dinky. 

" But Junot, what shall I say of him ? With long, silky, 
curly blue -black hair, with a noble head, out of which 
looked soft, chestnut-brown eyes — brave, dignified, affec- 
tionate, intelligent, and accomplished — he was the peer 
of any dog. His accomplishments were numerous. He 
would shut the door ; ring the bell ; bring his tail in his 
mouth, turning in a circle as he came ; hold a piece of 
savory meat on his nose when he was hungry, with his 
mouth watering, until the word of command, when he 
would throw it up and catch it ; sit in a chair, etc., and 
all this without signs, but merely at command. He would 
dive off a wharf into deep water, the end of his tail wav- 
ing a moment above the water as he disappeared, and 
bring up any thing thrown in, amid the shouts of specta- 
tors, who were always attracted by his performances. 
He would find any thing you had lost. He would bring 
slippers, gloves, clothes-brushes, etc., from the chambers 
to the dining-room or parlor when ordered. 

" On one occasion, a young lady on a visit at my 
father's attended an evening party. It was her first 
party. She was adorned with the jewelry of a married 
lady in the house. On her return from the party late at 
night, in the midst of relating the novel pleasure she had 
enjoyed, she suddenly paled, and putting her hand on her 
arm, said, ' There ! I have lost one of the bracelets.' She 
had walked home. I inquired the route by which she had 
come, and taking the other bracelet, showed it to Junot. 
He Was eager for the hunt. It was so dark that I could 



go UNDER THE TREES. 

scarcely see my hand before me — but Junot found the 
bracelet. 

" He formed the most devoted attachment to my father. 
During his last illness, he insisted on being in his room, 
and would furiously resent any attempt to remove him, 
uttering low growls of deep meaning. I alone could 
remove him with safety, though with difficulty. While 
in the room, he would from time to time stand by my 
father's bed with yearning aifection and interest, and oc- 
casionally lick his hand. The family never thought him 
like himself after my father's death. 

" But Duroc furnished an instance of canine reasoning 
which, if it differ from that of our superior race in de- 
gree, can not be distinguished from it, by me at least, in 
quality. When he was brought to Richmond by my 
brother, he was just grown. His proportions were ma- 
jestic, and he was very amiable. Not long after, there 
was a clustering of the scattered members around the old 
family altar. Junot was privileged, and always had the 
run of the house. Dinky and Duroc were under greater 
restrictions. But on this occasion Duroc participated in 
the general festivities, and followed Junot about among 
the family. Junot had been repeatedly sent into the 
chambers of the young men, and had as often brought 
something or other — hat, slippers, clothes-brush, etc. Du- 
roc had watched him for some time with glistening eyes, 
tail erect, and a bark which indicated good-natured rivalry. 
But little notice had been taken of him, while Junot had 
been covered with caresses and applause at each of his 
successes. At last Duroc marched off, and returned with 
head erect — thrilling all over with the pride of conscious 
triumph — and with a tooth-brush in his mouth, the brush 
end on his tongue ! He received what he had fairly won 



DOGS. 91 

— unstinted praise. He had never been taught any thing. 
Now was this reason or not ?" 

Did you ever inquire into the meaning of that question 
of God in his Word, " Who knoweth the spirit of man that 
goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth down- 
ward to the earth ?" Does upward mean immortality, 
and downward destruction ? Is the spirit of man the 
breath of the Almighty, and is the spirit of the beast his 
creation, to have an end with all else that has a begin- 
ning? 



XV. 

THE ADIRONDACKS. 

Leaving these trees, I have been in the deeper shades 
of the Adirondacks. One night on the river and half a 
day by rail brought me to Glenn's Falls. 

Here we mount four-horse stages, each of which stages 
was loaded with about twenty passengers, outside and in, 
and set out for Lake George. At the Half-Way House 
we stop to water the horses, and the landlord graciously 
recounts to the passengers the names of the drinks he 
would gladly furnish them. Milk-punch is the favorite 
beverage, the ladies expressing their delight in drinking 
it, the gentlemen saying there was a great deal of milk in 
it with very little rum. • 

The scenery on the ride to the lake is fine, and every 
moment enjoyable. It becomes wilder and more pictur- 
esque as we approach, and at noon we are pleasantly de- 
posited at the hotel. For quiet beauty, without the mag- 
nificence of some of the Swiss lakes, this Lake George is 
unsurpassed. As I sat upon the piazza and looked out 
upon its placid waters, its many isles, the mountains gen- 
tly rising from its very shores', in the far distance the 
domes of many hills like temples touching the bending 
skies, I readily believed that a lovelier lake could not be 
found. 

Near by sat a small party bewailing the loss of a trunk. 
Two young ladies and their aged mother, or grandmother. 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 93 

were the sufferers. It was the old lady's trunk that was 
missing, and she refused to be comforted even when 
told of another good old woman who had met with a 
similar loss, and who was heard to exclaim, " I shall 
never see that trunk again — at least, not in this world !" 
A young man came out of the telegraph office, and hav- 
ing taken from the young ladies a description of the 
lost trunk, assured them he would try to look it up by 
asking for it at the different stations on the route from 
Albany to the lake. In half an hour he sent word to the 
young ladies that the trunk was at Fort Edward, and 
would come up on the next stage. Their delight was 
beautiful to see. " Go, thank him," said one of them to 
her fair sister, who rose to go for the purpose ; " thank 
him ; smile on him — beam on him !" — which she fondly 
imagined would be the young man's highest reward. 

In the far North huge and fearful clouds gathered, and 
out of them fierce lightnings gleamed, as if the prince of 
the power of the air were marshaling his forces for battle. 
The distant roar of thunder was Kke " the footsteps of 
the dreadful God, marching upon the storm in vengeance." 
A week afterward, in the wilderness of the Adirondacks, 
I passed the ruins of a mighty pine-tree shivered by light- 
ning, and the guide told me that it was struck in the after- 
noon of the Friday previous ; being the very storm that 
had traveled down till it burst upon us on the piazza of 
the hotel, a hundred miles south of the spot where the big 
pine was shattered. 

On the loveliest lake, on the morning of the loveliest 
day. It was cool and bright ; the mists still clung to the 
mountain sides, but the sun was pouring his golden rays 
upon them, and they were absorbed in the glory of his 
coming. 



94 UNDER THE TREES. 

Islands, at least three hundred and sixty-five, bestud 
this lake. Its waters are translucent to a great depth. Its 
shores are lined with wooded hills, and in sunny nooks 
peaceful hamlets and frequent villas are nestling. Thirty- 
six miles long is this charming lake, one stretch of beauty 
from shore to shore. When the lower, that is the north- 
ern end is reached, we find stages waiting to transport us 
four miles overland to Lake Champlain. This stage 
ride is a great feature in the journey. Outside seats are 
reserved for those who get them first, and a general scram- 
ble ensues, in which ladies are the most vigorous and suc- 
cessful. Four or five stages, carrying twenty passengers 
each, are filled. Half way across we pass an extensive 
building with a large sign upon it, "Graphic Lead Fac- 
tory," where pencil lead is made. One man sitting be- 
hind me said to another — 

" What is it that is made there ?" 

" Plumbago," was the answer. 

" Plumbago !" exclaimed the other ; " I thought that 
was something the matter of your back," He had prob- 
ably suffered with lumbago in his time. 

The manager of this stage line goes with every excur- 
sion, and as the stages arrive at the ruins of Fort Ticon- 
deroga, he calls the whole procession to a halt, dismounts, 
and, taking a stand by the roadside, makes an oration to 
the listening and greatly amused passengers. On this 
occasion he was very eloquent. He drew a glowing pict- 
ure of the scenes that had made this spot memorable in 
the history of man. The blood of warriors, savage and 
civilized, had consecrated the soil ; Abercrombie and 
Montcalm, Ethan Allen and Arnold, had been made im- 
mortal by their deeds on the ground we now survey ; and, 
waxing magniloquent as he swayed his arms like a wind- 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 95 

mill, he pointed to the future of this great country, and 
exclaimed : " The glorious bird of Freedom, his beak a 
bill of rights, and his claws just laws, shall spread his 
wings from the coast that is gilded with the rising sun to 
the western shore, whose waves are amber and whose 
sands are gold." 

Bowing low to the applauding company, he resumed 
the reins, and in a few moments we passed the old fort 
and were on the banks of another and noble water. 
From the quiet beauty of Lake George, we came upon 
the broader and more magnificent Lake Champlain. On 
the eastern shore, away under the horizon, lie the Green 
Mountains of Vermont, and the loftier peaks of the Adi- 
rondacks support the western sky. Large islands often 
rise before us, and their names are identified with impor- 
tant events in the histofy of the country. 

I landed at Port Kent. This has long been the grand 
port of entry to the wilderness. The railroad from Platts- 
burg now makes that point the more desirable place to 
land. At Port Kent is the residence of Winslow C. Wat- 
son, Esq. His father was Elkanah Watson, of Revolution- 
ary memory, born in Plymouth, Mass., of the Winslow 
family, whose stock was in the Mayflower. He was in 
France during a large part of the war of the Revolution, 
in active co-operation and correspondence with all our 
great statesmen of that day. He came to the State of 
New York after the war, and entered ardently into 
schemes of internal improvement to develop the resources 
of the country. His sagacious mind was the first to con- 
ceive the grand idea of uniting Lake Erie and the Hud- 
son River by canal, and he lived to see it done, though, 
as in many other instances, the credit of the invention 
has been generally given to another. He bought vast 



g6 UNDER THE TREES. 

tracts of land on Lake Champlain, and settled at Port 
Kent, having in his mind the splendid conception of unit- 
ing the lakes of the Adirondack region with each other 
and then with Lake Champlain, so that four hundred 
miles of interior water communication would be opened 
up through a region whose mineral wealth and lumber 
are incalculably valuable. 

His son, Winslow C. Watson, settled in Plattsburg 
when he was twenty-one years of age, and has acquired 
great distinction in the field of law, politics, history, and 
literature. 

Such a man (I have enjoyed his friendship nearly forty 
years) met me at the landing, in the midst of a pouring 
rain, and in a few moments I was by a cheerful fire on 
the third day of August in his hospitable house, in the 
midst of his delightful family. His house is on a bluff, 
overlooking the lake at its widest part. It is fifteen miles 
to the Vermont shore, in a bay before us ; but the city of 
Burlington is only ten miles off, its spires and towers in full 
view. To the south, as far as the eye sees, lies the broad 
lake and the Green Mountain range, with Mount Mans- 
field and the Camel's Hump towering high above all the 
rest. I enjoyed a few days in such a spot, with books 
and friends, by the wells of philosophy and history, while 
the waters of the lake and the silent majesty of the mount- 
ains were speaking constantly to the soul ; a wild, roman- 
tic, and exciting region of country near, and inviting me 
to explore its mysteries. 

Within two and a half miles of Port Kent, on the way 
to Keeseville and the Adirondacks, is the most wonderful 
chasm or gorge that is to be found in North America. 
Such freaks or works of nature are not unknown in Scot- 
land and Switzerland, but I do not know of any thing like 
this in our. country. 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 97 

" The passage of the Au Sable River along its lofty and 
perpendicular banks and through the chasm at the high 
bridge is more familiar to the public mind than most of 
the striking and picturesque features of that romantic 
stream. The continued and gradual force of the current, 
aided perhaps by some vast effort of nature, has formed 
a passage of the river through the deep layers of sand- 
stone rock, which are boldly developed above the village 
of Keeseville, and form the embankment of the river, un- 
til it reaches the quiet basin below the high bridge. In 
the vicinity of Keeseville, the passage of the stream is 
between a wall of fifty feet in height on either side ; leav- 
ing these, the river glides gently along a low valley, until 
suddenly hurled over a precipice, making a fall of singu- 
lar beauty. Foaming and surging from this point over a 
rocky bed until it reaches the village of Birmingham, it 
there abruptly bursts into a dark, deep chasm of sixty 
feet. A bridge, with one abutment upon a rock that di- 
vides the stream, crosses the river at the head of the fall. 
This bridge is perpetually enveloped in a thick cloud of 
spray and mist. In winter the frost-work incrusts the 
rocks and trees with the m.ost gorgeous fabrics : myriads 
of columns and arches and icy» diamonds and stalactites 
glitter in the sunbeams. In the sunshine a brilliant rain- 
bow spreads its arc over this deep abyss. All these ele- 
ments, rare in their combination, shed upon this scene an 
effect inexpressibly wild, picturesque, and beautiful. The 
river plunges from the latter precipice amid the embra- 
sures of the vast gulf," in which for nearly a mile it is quite 
hidden to observation from above. It pours in a wild 
torrent, now along a natural canal, formed in the rocks in 
almost perfect and exact courses, and now darts madly 
down a precipice. The wall rises on a vertical face upon 

G 



98 UNDER THE TREES. 

each side from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty feet, 
while the width of the chasm rarely exceeds thirty feet, 
and at several points the stupendous masonry of the op- 
posite walls approaches within eight or ten feet. Lateral 
fissures, deep and narrow, project from the main ravine at 
nearly right angles. The abyss is reached through one 
of these crevices by a stairway descending to the water 
by two hundred and twelve steps. The entire mass of 
these walls is formed of laminae of sandstone rock, laid in 
regular and precise structures, almost rivaling the most 
accurate artificial work. The pines and cedars, starting 
from the apertures of the wall, spread a dark canopy over 
the gulf The instrumentality which has produced this 
wonderful work is a problem that presents a wide scope 
for interesting but unsatisfactory speculation. 

" At the foot of the stairway is a platform, separated 
by a narrow, deep chasm from what is called the Table 
Rock. Through this passage the river, compressed into 
a deep and limited channel, rushes with the impetuosity 
of a mill-race. The Table Rock was formerly reached 
by walking upon a log over the chasm, and was a favorite 
but somewhat dangerous resort of picnic parties, until a 
tragic event arrested the. habit. A Mr. Dyer, an Epis- 
copal minister, was, some years ago, in the act of leading 
a lady across this log, when, suddenly losing his balance, 
he fell into the rushing torrent, and never rose to the sur- 
face, nor was his body seen by the horror-stricken spec- 
tators until days afterward, when it was found far below 
upon a shallow in the river." 

Coming up out of the chasm, awed by the grandeur and 
majesty of this mighty cleft in the rocks, an agreeable 
surprise awaited us. The ladies of Port Kent had come 
out to this romantic spot, and in the shadows of the pine 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 99 

groves had spread a bounteous table, to which we were 
invited. A feast " under the trees," and in the society of 
new-found friends, was a welcome addition to the pleas- 
ures of the day. 

Then we rode up the river to successive rapids and 
falls, one of which would be famous if it were in Switzer- 
land. A grave-yard which we passed is noteworthy only 
for one of those queer epitaphs which betray a streak in 
human nature so inconsistent as to be next to incredible. 
It is in these exact words : 

" Sally Thome lies here, and that's enough ; 
The candle's out and so's the snuff. 
Her soul's with God, you need not fear. 
And what remains lies interred here." 

Halleck's Hill was not in our way, but we rode some 
miles around to cross it, for the sake of the view from its 
summit. The plain, as well watered as any Moses saw 
from Pisgah, stretches away and away to the St. Lawrence; 
frequent church spires and villages shone in the distance, 
and a world of wealth, prosperity, and contentment ap- 
peared to be reposing in this vast Vega. 

Some years ago a Baptist minister in this quarter gave 
his whole mind to horseshoe nails, and when a man 
gives his whole mind to any thing, something comes. So 
in this case. If the good man failed to make good points 
to his sermons, he made points to nails ; and the wisest 
of preachers said that good words are like nails fastened 
by the masters of assemblies. Perhaps this analogy led 
him to invent his machine to point horseshoe nails; and, 
having perfected it, he has retired from preaching, and 
derives a large income from the royalty paid him by the 
company that uses his patent. The village of Keeseville, 
on the Au Sable River, flourishes with numerous manu- 

LofC. 



lOO UNDER THE TREES. 

facturing establishments. Besides its twine and wire 
works, the horseshoe -nail factory presents a wonderful 
specimen of power and beauty in mechanical labor. In 
this thriving and beautiful village of Keeseville I spent 
the night, enjoying the hospitalities of H. N. Hewitt, Esq. 
The stage called at six o'clock in the morning for me 
at the door. It was cool and exhilarating, and the ride 
to the Point of Rocks was exciting and delightful. Some 
of the views on the Au Sable River were picturesque and 
exceedingly beautiful. We rode pleasantly on, and came 
to Au Sable Forks, where some sportsmen halted from 
the stages, with rods and guns and dogs, to spend a day 
or' two in the woods and streams. Here and at Black 
Brook village beyond we found the vast iron -works of 
J. & J. Rogers, whose mines are mines of untold wealth; 
and the mountain on our right, as we ride on, is honey- 
combed by the miners' toil, taking out the bowels of the 
hills and bringing them down to be roasted and tortured 
into the thousand uses of man. The recent death of the 
son of Mr. Rogers, a young man who had charge of the 
out-of-door business, was talked of wherever we stopped 
as a calamity universally deplored. He had endeared 
himself to the thousand laborers and their families by his 
manly bearing, indefatigable energy, and gentle kindness. 
I think, from what I heard of him, that he was a hero — 
young, great, and good ; powerful to do, and yet loving as 
a child. He overtasked his strength, began to run down, 
sought recovery in a milder clime, failed to find it, came 
back and died at home, among the people who loved him, 
and who wept over his grave as if their leader and brother 
had fallen. It is something to know that in the midst of 
the woods and mines and furnaces such a life is seen and 
felt in our matter-of-fact day. He was doubtless impru- 



THE ADIRONDACKS. lOI 

dent and over-earnest in his work ; but to die at twenty- 
four, with the benedictions of the sons of toil upon his 
dying head, is noble and blessed compared with an old 
age enriched by the ill-requited service and loaded with 
the reproaches of the poor. 

High on the hills the charcoal burners pursue their 
carbonic wprk, and we frequently meet their long, black, 
huge vans, dragged along toward the furnaces, loaded 
with coal. By the roadside kilns are built, to which the 
wood is drawn and carbonized, and in one place we 
passed an extensive manufactory of creosote. All the 
industries of the country are such as relate to lumber and 
minerals. These are apparently inexhaustible. The 
pressure of demand will gradually compel better ways, 
for now we are riding over the ruins of a plank road, and 
worse going can hardly be found, unless the corduroy 
patent is worse on which Governor Marcy met with that 
accident to one of his garments for which he brought the 
State of New York into his debt to the amount of fifty 
cents. 

My fellow- passenger on the front seat sought to be 
social. He was kind enough to inform me that he was 
from Boston. He was bound for the woods and camp, 
and his implements of sport — tools of trade — lying and 
standing about him, showed that he had purchased his 
outfit regardless of expense. Alas ! for my judgment by 
appearances. We halted to water the weary and heated 
horses at a trough filled from a sweet spring. The youth 
anticipated the horses, and drawing from his bag a large 
bottle of whisky, poured some into a tin dipper, and add- 
ing just a trifle of water, pronounced it with a big oath to 
be good, and drank it off. He handed the bottle to the 
driver, who had hastened to his side, and greedily did 



I02 UNDER THE TREES. 

likewise, excepting that he did not add water. He said 
he never liked to mix his drinks. After they and the 
other animals were refreshed, we got under way again ; 
the young man was more loquacious than before ; the 
driver and he to their profaneness added vulgarity, a 
mixture less disagreeable to both than even whisky and 
water. They could not wait till they came .to' another 
• watering-place before they refreshed again, but, taking the 
bottle by the neck, they guzzled, turn about. At every 
spring to which we came they both descended and fra- 
ternally drank, with coarse jokes, laughter, and swearing. 
The only decent thing about it was that they did not in- 
vite me to join them in a drink. These frequent pota- 
tions soon began to tell upon them, and they grew livelier 
and more boisterous in their jollity. The Bostonian 
punched the horses with the butt of his rifle to make 
them go faster, while the muzzle of it was often pointing 
fearfully toward my part of the stage. This was great 
amusement. Then he took out his revolver, and let the 
driver divert himself by firing it off at the trees by the 
wayside as we rode along. A rifle in the hands of one 
and a pistol in those of another intoxicated fellow were 
making my situation unpleasant, and I began to fancy 
that the dangers of the wilderness were upon me much 
sooner than they were anticipated. I could have man- 
aged a bear or two, but these drunken ruffians, each of 
them sporting with fire-arms, were unbearable. How 
soon they might be tempted to take a pop at me, or what 
might happen from an accidental shot, I could not tell ; 
but it would not have been strange if something serious 
had occurred at any moment. The long forenoon wore 
away in these exciting exercises. The rough plank road 
became rougher as we proceeded. Nothing on it was 



THE ADIRONDACKS. IO3 

kept in repair but the toll-gates. Jolting on, pitching 
about, turning out to get by a bad place, we picked our 
way through the woods, till at last we reached Franklin 
Falls, where we were to stop for dinner. This over, and 
the horses being rested or exchanged, we resumed our 
seats. The dinner and the liquor made the youth and 
the driver stupid. The one stretched himself at full 
length upon a vacant seat in the stage, and was soon 
sleeping soundly. The other resisted the coming drowsi- 
ness a little longer ; but after a while, having no one to 
talk to him, fell asleep with the reins in his hands, and 
the horses took their own way — a very slow one always, 
and now a little more so. We crept on, gradually rising, 
the scenery more and more wild and weird and gloomy. 
At Bloomingdale I left the stage which had thus far 
brought me on. Mounted upon the high seat in the front 
of the stage that bore upon it the name of Paul Smith, I 
rode a couple of hours from Bloomingdale right into the 
woods ; now and then a clearing improved by culture met 
the eye, but it was plain that we were passing away from 
civilization and plunging into the wilderness. Suddenly we 
emerged from the dense forest on the margin of a lovely 
lake, and a short turn in the road brought us in front of 
a large, handsome hotel. Its broad piazza was filled with 
genteel guests, ladies and children, apparently at home ; 
and yet we are now in the lake country of the Adirondacks. 
The name of this place is Paul Smith. That is the name 
of the house — also of the proprietor and landlord. He 
was named Apollos Smith, and submitted to that name 
until he was long and widely known as Pol Smith, and 
then the heathen name gave place to the Christian, and 
Pol became Paul. As Paul Smith, he began to keep a 
little tavern on this lake, to give shelter and liquor to 



I04 UNDER THE TREES. 

travelers; but my good friend, Thomas H. Faile, Esq., en- 
couraged him to drop the liquor, and the loss proved a 
great gain. He began to flourish forthwith. His tavern 
grew larger and larger every year. He built new wings 
and raised the roof, and stretched the verandas, until 
now his house is by far the greatest and best in this whole 
region, and Paul Smith does more business than all the 
rest of the hotels together. His house is on the margin 
of the lower St. Regis Lake, bright mirror of the St. Re- 
gis Mountain, that stands in full view of the hotel, and 
within easy reach by boat. 

The first friend to greet me was Dr. McCosh, of 
Princeton College, who was here quietly domesticated. 
One could hardly imagine a more decided change for a 
great philosopher and teacher than to leave college clois- 
ters, and find the long-drawn aisles of these forest tem- 
ples, with the woods, the waters, and the skies for his only 
studies. The seclusion is profound in spite of the com- 
pany. He had just returned from Mount St. Regis, to 
the summit of which he and his family, including three la- 
dies, had walked, making a journey of ten miles up and 
down a mountain, and all were as fresh as the morning 
when they returned. After supper, and in the cool, late 
evening, he and I went out into the middle of the lake in 
a little boat, and sat under the stars. It was an hour for 
thought and recollection, and naturally we recurred to 
scenes we had enjoyed together in other years and lands. 
He visited this country ten years ago, and the day after 
his arrival we went to the Falls of Niagara, and there, 
while he was studying that wonder of Nature, I was study- 
ing a nobler work of God. 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 105 

DEER SHOOTING. 

There was great excitement on the piazza of Paul Smith's 
Hotel. The ladies were excited. The gentlemen were 
astir. Even the children were alive to the matter that now 
absorbed the attention of all hands. They were drawing 
lots ! Lots for what ? A grand hunt for deer was to come 
off the next day. To shoot a deer in the Adirondacks is 
a deed to be proud of, to boast of with that modest self- 
complacency which hangs around all truly great sports- 
men. They go home from their summer campaign in 
the wilderness laden with spoils of victory. Their ^pear 
and their bow, or rather rifle, got them the trophies that 
now adorn their halls ; the branching antlers of a noble 
buck are stuck upon the wall of their dining-room, and 
perhaps the skin has been made into an elegant mat 
that stretches itself before the fire. Admiring friends, 
who have never been in the woods, listen with mute won- 
der while the proud host relates the perils of the forest in 
which he pursued the monarch of the herd, and brought 
him low with the unerring aim of his trusty gun. Perhaps 
there is no pleasure in this world superior to that of the 
gallant hunter retailing to unsophisticated listeners his 
triumphs in the field. 

The brave, hardy, eager gentlemen from New York 
and other cities were now prepared to go out the next 
morning to renew the chase. They go two or three times 
a week, and as the hunt is attended with great expense, 
exposure, and fatigue, and many are to share in it, it is 
just that each should have a fair chance to bag the game 
and glory of the day. The shore of the lake is laid off 
into sections, and each section has its point of observation. 
These points are some considerable distance asunder, and 



I06 UNDER THE TREES. 

lots are drawn by which the station of each one going to 
join the hunt is determined. This allotment is made 
overnight, that when early morning comes, each brave 
deerslayer repairs to his post, and with all the patience 
he may possess awaits the issue. With him, in a light 
boat, is the guide, who rows and knows the spot to which 
his man is assigned. The boat soon reaches the point, 
and nothing is to be done but to wait, in it or on the 
shore, as the wary and anxious sportsman pleases. Thus 
the lake is environed with the watchful picket guardsmen. 
In the mean time a real huntsman — a paid and experi- 
enced man of the woods — enters the forest, with a leash of 
hounds, some six or eight, attached to his belt. Well in, 
he lets off a dog, trained to the service and eager to have 
a run, who begins at once to run in a circle, widening 
constantly as he seeks to get upon the trail of a deer. 
The hunter goes on and lets off another dog, and then 
another, until he has started his whole pack, who, running 
in circles, scour the whole forest, and seldom fail to scare 
up a buck. The moment the dog strikes the scent he be- 
gins to bark, and the glad sound meets the distant ears 
of the waiting watchers on the lake. The deer, alarmed, 
instinctively takes to the water, as the only way to break 
the trail ^nd deprive the dog of his scent, by which he is 
keeping up the chase. The noble animal rushes through 
the forest into the lake to swim across. He is the prize 
of the boat nearest to which he takes the water. The 
guide rows in pursuit of him, and being able to row far 
more rapidly than the poor beast can swim, has no diffi- 
culty in overtaking him. When he has come so near 
that the merest bungler with a gun, who could not hit a 
barn door across the road, can now put the muzzle of the 
gun into the ear of the animal, if he please, the gallant 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 1 07 

Nimrod blazes away with his new rifle, lodges the bullet 
in the brain of the beast, and the work is done. If the 
deer, however, will not keep still long enough to be shot 
in this way, the guide takes him by the tail and holds him 
while the accomplished sportsman shoots him in the head. 
It sometimes occurs that even then, with the buck thus 
held by the tail at one end and the rifle in the hands of 
an excited shooter at another, the ball goes all abroad and 
the game is not hurt. Then the guide, with an oar or 
, with his own stalwart arms, manages to get the animal's 
head under water, and so drowns him. But in the best 
of the business, it requires the same amount of science, 
skill, valor, and endurance to kill a deer that it would to 
go out to the barn and kill the cow. Give the cow the 
run of the yard, and it would be more of a feat to bring 
her down with a rifle than to slay a deer in the Adiron- 
dacks. 

Before the present plan of laying off the lake into sta- 
tions was hit upon, the rule was that whoever got within 
rifle-shot of the deer in the water first should fire. One 
of my friends was out with a party hunting ! When the 
deer took to the lake the boats started from their several 
points, and the gentleman in the first fired and missed. 
Then came up the second, and his aim was equally bad. 
The deer now belonged to the third, whose right there was 
none to dispute. He came on, and having his son, a lad 
of twelve years, with him, laid the boat alongside of the 
swimming buck, which the guide kindly seized and held 
fast by the tail while the boy delivered the charge into 
his head and made him dead. 

The slain deer is now towed to the shore and transport- 
ed to the hotel in triumph. All the ladies shake hands 
with the successful hero of the day, who is congratulated 



I08 UNDER THE TREES. 

upon his heroism and prowess as a hunter. He is the 
champion cff the woods until the next hunt comes off, and 
some one else, going through the same fearful scenes, 
comes home with the spoils of the chase, to be greeted 
with the applause of admiring women and crowned with 
the laurels of the latest victory. 

This evening a distinguished divine was the hero, hav- 
ing brought in from the last hunt the trophies of the field, 
a noble pair of antlers and the skin of a fat buck. It is 
not probable that he will be equally successful to-morrow, 
for you observe that it does not depend upon the skill or 
patience or power of the sportsman ; but the simple mat- 
ter is, whether the frightened animal flees into the lake 
near one boat or another. It is death to him to go into 
the water any where, for the lake is lined with rifles ready 
to do him execution. It is only a question of chance 
as to whether this or that man, the banker or the baker, 
the lawyer or the divine, shall have the pleasure and 
the glory of letting out the life-blood of the pride of the 
forest. 

It is quite essential to the good standing of a gentleman 
who comes here to shoot that he should kill at least one 
deer. The ladies enter so heartily into it that a man 
fancies he loses somewhat in the eyes of his own wife if 
he fail to assassinate one or two bucks during the season. 
Not long ago a clergyman from the city of New York, who 
was equally anxious and unlucky, having heard that a 
guide had a pet deer of his own, bought the beast, and hired 
the man to take it out slyly in the morning and tie it to a 
tree. The reverend hunter followed, shot the poor thing 
and brought it home to his wife, who rejoiced with him as 
one who had taken great spoils. 

There are other ways of taking deer here, such as 



THE ADIRONDACKS. I09 

watching for them by night at favorite places where they 
come to the lake for drink, and shooting them there ; but 
this requires work in the dark, and keeps a gentleman out 
of his bed when he prefers to be in it. The more com- 
mon one I have described, which is attended with no fa- 
tigue nor exposure, as the valiant hunter can take his 
lunch and an umbrella with him, and hunt a deer to the 
death without rising from his seat. So far as I know, this 
is the most luxurious mode of enjoying "the chase" that 
is at present practiced among accomplished sportsmen. 
Nothing could be safer and pleasanter, unless you sit in 
an arm-chair at the menagerie and fire at the beasts in 
their cages. 

Hence we view: i. That the killing of a deer in the 
Adirondacks is no very great exploit. 2. That the least 
said about it the better. 3. That the killing of deer is in 
itself right and proper, for the animal is good for the food 
of man, and all that are killed are duly eaten. We are 
fond of venis&n, and the Creator doubtless provided it for 
our use. It is quite proper that ministers and laymen 
should take a hand in purveying for the table, and the 
zest of the hunt is a pleasure to be enjoyed by those who 
like it. Because I have no taste for the sport, I will not 
infer that it is foolish or wicked for others. Let them en- 
joy it. But the romance of deer-stalking and the renown 
of the successful huntsman somewhat fade as we contem- 
plate the picture of two men in a boat, the one holding a 
beast in the water while the other shoots him. It is right, 
but it is not great. 

But there is glory up here. There is one glory of the 
woods, and another glory of the lakes, and another of the 
mountains. And the heavens cover the wilderness with 
their glory. And nature is untutored, wild, luxuriant, free, 



no UNDER THE TREES. 

jubilant. You can shout as loud as you like, and sing 
and laugh, and nobody with store clothes or city ways 
will hear you. You breathe freely and expand your chest, 
and forget there is a book in the world, and don't care 
if there is never to be another, and then take a strong pull 
at the oar, and get tired and hungry before you go in to 
eat and sleep and rise up to play. 

If thinking is your mood, there's nothing here to hinder. 
It is the most subdued, quiet, solemn solitude that my 
soul was ever in. I have seen no signs that the aborig- 
ines were ever here. No one is here but the strangers 
who come and go. And the Invisible ! The Great Spirit 
is here dwelling in the forest temples, riding upon the 
circle of the heavens, speaking in the wind and thunder. 
It is good always to be in the midst of him ; to feel this 
strong wholesome air to be his love — an unseen sea, in 
which we float and bathe and rejoice continually ; to look 
down into this mirror in which his blue sky is reflected, 
and to see in that beautiful concave tokens of his provi- 
dence, care, and kindness, a loving Father over all and in 
all, and we in him, now and always. We will get health 
and strength in these wild woodlands, and then go down 
to use them all for him, and those he bids us love and 
serve. Life is good. Work is good. It is all very 
good. Even play is good. And by- and -by rest. No 
more toil. No pain. No misunderstanding. But peace, 
rest, love, praise. 

FISHING IN THE LAKES. 

I flatter myself that I am lineal successor of that apos- 
tle who said, " I go a-fishing ;" or of one of those six who 
said, "We also go with thee." From early childhood I 
have been in that line. If half the time spent by the 



THE ADIRONDACKS. HI 

brookside fishing had been given to study, I would have 
more book-lore to-day. Perhaps, also, less of nature, less 
of health, less of the world. The late Rev. Dr. Bethune 
was one of the ardent lovers of the rod, the fly, and the 
stream, a thorough enthusiast in the art and science of 
fishing ; and when I asked him where he first learned to 
love it, he said that when he was a boy at school in Salem, 
N. Y., a man who was known as Fisher Billy was often 
sent up there from Cambridge— the town below— to go 
upon the limits of the jail— the limits were a mile every 
way from the jail, and a debtor had the freedom of the 
limits. Fisher Billy, always in debt, for he would go 
a-fishing when he ought to be at work, would bring his rod 
and lines and whip the brooks about Salem. Young 
Bethune fell into his company, and was then and there 
inspired with love of this gentle art. " The very man," I 
replied, "who first taught me." And so it proved that 
Fisher Billy, in jail at Salem, was fishing with Bethune ; 
out of jail, Billy and I followed the running brooks to- 
gether in Cambridge. 

It is more of an art and more of a science now than it 
was then. And all the brooks and lakes within easy 
reach of the cities have been hunted and whipped and 
worried till trout— the only fish that true amateur fisher- 
men seek after— have become as rare as gold eagles or 
silver dollars. Up here in these lakes and streams of 
the Adirondack region, there is as yet comparative retire- 
ment and peace. It is only a term of some thirty or forty 
years since these primitive wilds were invaded by the 
sportsman. The hundred lakes and rivers and rivulets 
are too many and too vast to have been sensibly affected 
by these years of spoil. All the lakes are not inhabited 
by trout. Some of them are infested with lizards, that 



112 UNDER THE TREES. 

leave nothing else alive within their domains. They 
would devour all the eggs that fish would lay if there 
were any on such employment bent. Seth Green could 
not propagate trout where pickerel abound. In fact, 
trout are such good eating that they eat one another. 
And many of these waters are therefore as clear of fish 
as the lakes in Central Park. Others swarm with them. 
AH the fishing of the amateurs produces no perceptible 
reduction of the number. Only a few of the thousands 
who come here catch any. The rest go a-fishing. But 
fishing is one thing, catching fish is another. I have 
done a good deal of both in my day, and though now not 
much addicted to the sport, and rarely finding time in the 
course of a year to indulge in the passion of younger days, 
I can tell you how to fish with a fly. 

Fly-fishing ranks among the graceful arts. A fly rod 
should be twelve feet long, light, very flexible, and yet 
strong. English anglers adhere to heavy rods. Amer- 
ican sportsmen regard a seven -ounce rod the perfect 
weight for trout, and are yearly decreasing the weight of 
their salmon rods. 

The line should be braided silk, or a prepared silk line. 
Hair and silk intermingled make a line highly recom- 
mended by the dealers, but wholly rejected by experi- 
enced anglers. For trout-fishing the line should be about 
a hundred feet long. The leader, or, as some call it, the 
casting-line, should be nine feet long. The reel should 
be as light as possible to hold the hundred feet of line. 
There are so many persons to whom fly-fishing is a mys- 
tery that it may be well to explain it. 

Imagine, then, the reel in its place on the light rod, 
the silk line passed through the rings to the tip, where 
the casting-line, of silk worm-gut, is attached. On the 



THE ADIRONDACKS. II3 

casting-line, at equal distances apart, are looped two or 
three artificial flies. Grasping the rod in the right hand, 
the angler pulls ofif two feet or so of line from the reel 
with his left hand, and then gently, but with great skill, 
throws this increase of length through the rings and off 
from the end of the rod, steadily and gracefully increas- 
ing the length of line with each wave of the rod, until he 
has given out as long a line as he intends to cast. This 
length of cast will depend on a variety of circumstances ; 
it may be only the length of the rod, or it may extend to 
nearly or quite a hundred feet. The casting-line which 
carries the flies falls on the water, lying out straight at 
the end of the line. Then the angler lifts the rod in his 
hand, thus drawing the flies along near or on the surface 
of the water. He draws them only a few feet, and if no 
trout rise to seize the fly, he lifts the line from the water 
with a slight jerk of the rod, throws it back over his 
shoulder, and again forward to the surface of the water, 
again drawing and lifting and casting. The object is to 
draw the flies over the surface of the water in various di- 
rections, and thus " whip " all the water in which trout are 
apt to be. 

The trout, seeing the fly, rushes up from below, and 
generally strikes it with a swinging blow of his tail, at the 
same instant turning his open mouth to seize it. A slight 
movement of the angler's wrist strikes the hook into the 
mouth of the fish, and then it only remains to land him. 
A light fly rod is never used to lift a fish from the water. 
A landing-net is needed, unless the angler is well used to 
landing fish with his hand. The rod must be always held 
so that it bends, and thus the spring of the rod keeps the 
hook tight in the mouth of the fish. If the rod be light, 
this bend and spring will generally prevent the breaking 

H 



114 UNDER THE TREES. 

of the line or the tearing out of the hook. The fish strug- 
gles to get free, but the angler gradually reels in the line 
until there is only the nine feet of casting-line beyond the 
tip. Then, if the fish be well tired out, he lifts him to the 
top of the water, places the landing-net under him, and 
takes him out. 

It is a meditative amusement. Fly-fishing is more ex- 
citing than the vulgar way of bait, though I regard the lat- 
ter as the more honorable of the two. In both cases you 
deceive the fish, but with the fly you mock him. with the 
semblance of the insect, and he jumps for it and is caught 
with a bare hook ; in the latter case he takes the verita- 
ble food he needs, and dies at his dinner. The question 
is not worth debating, but I rather prefer the worm. All 
real sportsmen despise fishing with bait where it is possi- 
ble to cast the fly. I have a brother to whom all my love 
for piscatory pleasures passed at his birth. Certain it is 
that on or about the time of his coming into the world 
my fondness for it ceased, and has never returned, while 
he grew up with a passion for the sport, which has grown 
with his growth. • I have fished in his company this sum- 
mer, finding far more excitement and enjoyment in seeing 
him throw a line sixty or seventy feet long and pick a 
trout up at that far distance from the boat than to both- 
er and blunder about it myself He came up here before 
me, and you will not be surprised that the receipt of such 
a letter as the following stirred within me the slumbering 
fires of youth, fires that made me take to the waters. 

MY brother's LETTER. 

Paul Smith's, Jtnie i8. 
'■'■Dear Brother: — My health and strength continue on 
the gain, through constant exercise and exposure in the 



THE ADIRONDACKS. I15 

open air. Rain or shine, I am out from morning till 
night, and I sleep serenely. Last Saturday I fished the 
Osgood River, through the ' burned ground,' and brought 
in ninety-three trout, many very fair-sized, and all good 
fish. It is plain that large fish are not to be found here 
as plentifully as in old times. I recall my first visit to 
this spot some fourteen years ago, and the numbers of 
large trout that rose to my flies in the bay, at the mouth 
of the Weller Brook. Now they are rare. Yesterday 
morning I had for the first time a-n hour's sport which 
reminded me of old times. I went out just at daybreak. 
My guides, John and Frank, had not yet put in their 
morning appearance, and I took a boat and went alone 
around Island Point into the bay. Off the point a low 
fog covered the water — a sure sign that no trout would 
rise there ; but I was glad to run out of it as I entered 
the bay and found a clear, soft morning, with a slight rip- 
ple on the water from a rising breeze. For three weeks 
past I have been searching the bay for trout. I have had 
no doubt whatever that there was a point of rendezvous 
somewhere in the semicircle whose radius is over a fourth 
of a mile. But I have cast, morning and evening, over 
what seemed to me every inch of its surface, and found 
only a few small fish. 

" As I emerged from the fog and looked ahead (I was 
pushing, not pulling my boat), I saw a good trout break 
the surface two hundred feet from me ; and, shoving swift- 
ly forward, I threw two flies over the spot before the con- 
centric waves which he had made had wholly vanished. 
The tail fly was a dark jungle-cock, and the bobber a 
scarlet ibis. Imagine my satisfaction, as the flies struck 
the water, at the sight of a fine trout going out into the 
air and coming down, head first and mouth open, on the 



Il6 UNDER THE TREES. • 

scarlet ibis. No need to strike him. He was hungry, 
and hooked himself tight and firm ; and the first rush he 
made — bending my Norris rod in a semicircle as I gave 
him the spring of it — told me that he was a strong fish for 
his weight, which turned out a trifle over two pounds. 
We don't kill trout now, as we used in our boy sports. 
What is there that we do now as then ? Do you know of 
any thing? Many a trout I have landed with a home- 
made fly on the end of a short linen line, tied to a birch 
or a hackmatack rod, by guiding him in the current of a 
brook till I could suddenly rush him down stream and 
out of the water on some gravel beach, where sometimes 
(when I was a very small shaver — the trout very large) 
I would literally fall on him, and surround him with my 
arms and legs. All that was ages and ages ago ; and 
now I am fishing with a rod that cost sixty dollars, a reel 
that cost twenty, and a line that cost six, and flies that 
cost two and three dollars a dozen, and — oh, that I had 
known the use of it when we were boys — a landing-net, 
the cost of which I can't tell, for I have used it tep years, 
and in repairs during that time it has passed through sev- 
eral generations of distinct existence in each separate 
part of it. And with all this tackle do I kill more trout 
than when I was a boy? Yes, fourfold. All the twad- 
dle about country boys and country tackle beating the 
city sportsman is nonsense. I speak from thorough 
knowledge of both. In a mountain brook where the 
trout are small and plenty, give me bare legs, a birch rod, 
and a short line. But in lake fishing where large trout 
are not over-plenty, the costly fly-rod and tackle, in the 
hands of a knowing sportsman, will do the work. By 
long casts and rapid, easy work, he covers in a short time 
a vast extent of water, and thus finds the fish that would 



THE ADIRONDACKS. H? 

be slow to find a baited hook. You should see the work- 
ing of one of these six-ounce Norris rods. It is a beau- 
tiful piece of machinery, and a fish once fairly hooked is 
as good as landed. 

" When I struck that two-pounder, had he been on a 
line fast to a birch pole, his first rush would probably 
have torn the hook from his mouth, or broken rod or 
line ; and if I had tried in the old-fashioned way to lift 
him out of water, the chances are ten to one I would have 
lost him. But my Norris rod bends tip to butt without 
breaking, and when he started I threw the rod back over 
my shoulder, and the tip, thin as a knitting-needle, was 
out before my eyes pointing to the fish — the spring of the 
rod serving to keep the hook gently pressed in its place, 
and the reel paying out line as long as the trout contin- 
ued his rush. One, two, three rushes, and then he turned 
and began to swim in a circle, and, yielding to the press- 
ure, approached the boat as I reeled in. Then he swam 
around me, rushed under the boat now and then, made 
some sharp, short dashes, and after three or five minutes 
of struggling gave it up, and allowed me to bring him 
where I could put the landing-net under him. As I tried 
that he made one quick plunge, but he was in the net, 
and then in the boat. I cast my flies again instantly, 
and two fish rose, one seizing the bobber, and the other 
the tail fly. This time each fish struck the fly with his 
tail, and, turning sharp, seized it with his mouth. Both 
were hooked, and both landed. So it went on, and in an 
hour or less I had killed nine trout, which weighed eleven 
and a half pounds. This is nothing, in point of size, 
compared with what we do in Maine and Northern New 
Hampshire; but the fish are strong. This is the best 
hour's sport I have had, and I have given you rather a 



Il8 UNDER TEE TREES. 

longer account of it than you will care for. But come up 
here, and see or do the thing yourself I love angling so 
well that I always like better to see another take fish than 
to take them myself And I know no other place where 
one can live in so good a hotel and find plenty of trout. 
I shall be here till the first, and if you can not come till 
I have gone, I can trust you to the tender mercies of 
Paul, and by that time you will find plenty of sportsmen 
here. Just now, I have the house pretty much to myself" 

ON THE LAKES. 

Early in the morning Paul Smith stood upon the shore 
of the lake near one side of a light skiff, and Dr. McCosh 
by the other. I was in it, and alone, except the guide, 
who was to be my oarsman, and to conduct me through 
many of the lakes of the Adirondacks. The landlord of 
the hotel and the President of Princeton had done me 
the great honor of rising with the larks to see me off. As 
I pushed out into the waters of the Lower St. Regis, a 
sense of solitude began at once to come over me. The 
venerable Doctor had given me his blessing as we parted, 
and I felt it was good to have it. The morning mists 
disappeared before the sun coming up in his strength, 
and the loveliness of a cool day in August ; a bright, 
bracing atmosphere lay around and over me, possessing 
my veins and filling me with the rich sensations of high 
animal enjoyment. This is the luxury of living, of simply 
being a thing with life, rejoicing in taking a long breath, 
shouting, rowing, or leaping. We do not know much of 
this in town, certainly not in hot weather. It marks the 
difference in nations, and tells on character, religion, let- 
ters, and art. It is climate : not half enough studied in 
its bearings upon society and the progress of the race. 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 119 

A quarter of an hour took me across the lake into the 
" slew," through which the guide poled the boat cautious- 
ly among the fallen trees and snags into Spitfire, a lake- 
let with a name that does it justice, and then by a narrow 
pass into St. Regis Lake, the upper. This is nearly on 
the summit of the lake region, 1500 or 2000 feet above 
the sea, its waters flowing off to the north, and the lakes 
into which we are soon to come discharging themselves 
eastward, and then northeasterly into Lake Champlain. 

A sense of exquisite beauty filled me as the skiff glided 
gracefully into the midst of this lovely sheet of water. 
The sun was now well up in the blue, cloudless sky. 
Many isles lay around on the bosom of the lake. They 
and the shores were covered with dense pine and spruce 
trees. The water was like a polished mirror of steel. 
The islands were reflected. So was the heaven above 
me. Sometimes over the forest shores the distant ranges 
of mountains told me there was a world beyond and out 
of the limits of the bowl in which I was floating. But 
the lake seemed as a little sea of glass, clear as crystal, 
brilliant in the sun, skirted with living green, evergreen, 
and the feeling of the place was that of perfect isolation 
from "the world and the rest of mankind." During all 
the tour of these and three or four lakes yet to be men- 
tioned, I did not see a boat or the face of a man, or any 
thing to intimate that one had ever entered this charming 
desert before. No voice, no gun, no bark of a dog in the 
all-surrounding forest disturbed the deep serenity of the 
scene. Now and then the scream of a loon, fearfully like 
that of a human cry, would pierce the ear and increase 
the stillness as it ceased. But for my guide, who happily 
was stupid and said nothing, I was the only man there. 
It was a natural paradise, and I was as solitary as Adam 



I20 UNDER THE TREES. 

before Eve appeared. Charles V. said of the cathedral 
of Burgos, such was its beauty, it should be put under a 
glass case and kept for show. It was almost painful to 
me that the loveliness of this scene is lost to the world. 
Why is such a waste of glory here ? The sun shines on 
nothing more charming to behold. Here it lies, and the 
summer dies away into winter ; and then the spring 
clothes it with resurrection beauty again. Perhaps the 
angels see it. But why was so much glory spilled where 
so few mortals, out of millions, ever see it ? 

We touched the southern shore of the lake and stood 
in the margin of a dense forest, apparently impenetrable, 
certainly gloomy, damp, and cold. Out of the thicket 
emerged an old man, in many-colored and patched rai- 
ment, with long and matted beard and hair, who was not 
far above his companions of the woods, and this queer 
old fellow had with him a horse and a sled. Without 
words, for his business was understood by the guide, who 
knew where to meet him, the little boat was pulled out 
of the water and hoisted upon the sled,* and we three 
trudged behind it as the beast drew it along over the 
damp, swampy way that had been made for this purpose. 
This is called a "carry." It might have been avoided 
by taking a passage around it by what is called " the nine 
carries," so many little lakes with slight separations, over 
which the guide drags or lifts his boat. As this is harder 
work for him, he said nothing to me of that route, and as 
the rule of the country is to get all the expenses, as well as 
the $2 50 a day to the guide, out of the traveler, the guide 
has clear gain by making his passenger pay the dollar, 
which is the fare on this overland ferry ; then you pay 
him another dollar to come back over it the next day, 
which he saves for himself by going through the " nine 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 121 

carries " tomorrow. The old ferryman proved to be a 
character, a Frenchman, whose first name was Moses. 
His other name was to me unintelligible, though he and 
the guide took turns in pronouncing it for me. He is a 
trapper in winter, and makes game of the beavers and ot- 
ter and mink, whose furs pay him better than toting boats 
across the land in summer. The walk was through a low 
and wet pathway in the woods, and I was quite ready to 
suppose we had made a long two miles' march when 
Moses lifted up his voice and cried, " Half-way !" 

Another half-hour brought us to the border of another 
lake, at a clearing where stands the solitary cabin of 
Moses the Trappist ; for he might well be one of that 
order, his business being indicated by the title and his 
solitude befitting the monk. About his abode were all 
the tools and signs of his craft. And a barrel of cider on 
skids, with a junk bottle inserted into the bung-hole, told 
me that however smart he might be in catching muskrats, 
he does not know how to make vinegar. Take the bottle 
out; leave the bung out; let the barrel be half full of 
cider; shake it thoroughly three times a day, and it will be 
vinegar in ten days. The bottle keeps the oxygen out; 
shaking gets it in and does the business. "What I know 
about farming " is very little, but I can make vinegar, 
though well aware that more flies are caught with molasses. 

At the door of the cabin of Moses the Trapper we em- 
barked on Big Clear Pond, a round lake, with no islands 
in it, and four miles in diameter. The wind had now 
risen, and as the little skiff danced about merrily, my 
dull guide sought to entertain me with narrow escapes he 
had inade on former excursions, when he had ladies for 
passengers, who had been frightened greatly on this very 
lake, which has a fine sweep for the wind, and easily makes 



122 UNDER THE TREES. 

a great swell. As we approached the other shore, he gave 
a shrill whistle to summon a man to the " carry." In 
some stages of the water we could follow the " slew " be- 
tween this and the next lake ; but now it was too shallow, 
and we were obliged to resort to horse-power. At the 
beach a boy was waiting with a horse and cart. Upon 
the latter was hoisted the boat, which was fastened in its 
place with pegs, and as the stretch was some three miles 
across — a longer walk than was agreeable — I resumed 
my seat in the boat on the cart, and was jolted and 
tumbled over the horrible pass, into the densest forest 
and through marshy ground, that made the ride any thing 
but enjoyable. Nor was the comfort of the journey in- 
creased by the heavy thunder that now rolled over us, 
presaging rain, from which the only protection would be 
the boat turned upside down, with myself on the wet 
ground underneath. Happily the clouds passed over, and 
when we emerged from the forest the sun came out also 
to meet us. On the edge of the lake to which we had 
now come stood a neat hotel, to which we were urgently 
invited ; but the time for rest and refreshment had not 
come, and we launched our tiny craft once more, and now 
we were on the bosom of the Upper Saranac. 

This is the queen of the lakes. It is nine miles long, 
with irregular shores, wooded points putting out and mak- 
ing lovely nooks and bays, with frequent isles floating, as 
it were, on the surface. Some of these islands have tra- 
ditions hanging around them, and one of them will be 
pointed out for years to come as the scene of a tragical 
event that happened upon it this very season. At the 
close of a very fine day last spring, a man and his wife 
had rowed out to the island, and were sitting near the 
shore enjoying the sunset. A gentleman out on the lake 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 1 23 

with his guide and boat espied something white on the 
island, and the guide insisted that it was a loon. The 
gentleman was not satisfied, but the guide took his rifle 
and fired, killing the woman on the spot. 

A map of this wilderness country will show a hundred 
and more lakes to the west of the one we are now pass- 
ing through, and weeks as easily as days might be spent 
in going from one to another; but the journey would be- 
come tedious perhaps from sameness. Sweets cloy. This 
chain of lakes is " linked sweetness long drawn out." It 
is a system of lakes, rather than a chain. Raquette Lake 
is the largest of them all, with a shore of ninety miles, and 
it is 1800 feet above the sea, and the Blue Mountain rises 
east of it 4000 feet high, with a lake of the same name at 
its foot, esteemed the Pearl of the Wilderness. Raquette 
River enters Long Lake, sixteen miles long, and coming 
out of it, is navigable for thirty miles, and then enters 
Tupper's Lake, more celebrated for its picturesque beauty 
than any of the many around it. When the river leaves 
this lake again it rolls its augmented volume out of the 
wilderness into the fertile fields of St. Lawrence County. 
Thus the whole length and breadth of this strange country 
may be traversed by boats so light as to be easily carried 
on the shoulders of a man. When I had reached the 
lower end of the Saranac Lake, my guide drew the boat 
upon the land, and taking a yoke fitted for his shoulders 
and neck, put it across the middle of the boat ; then, lying 
upon the ground, pulled the boat over so that the shoulder 
yoke came to its place, and, rising up, had the boat over his 
head and slanting down his back ; he walked off with it a 
few hundred rods, and deposited it in the Saranac River. 

Here is Bartlett's, a very comfortable hotel — a great 
resort for sportsmen. It is not approached by any land 



124 UNDER THE TREES. 

carriage — its only path being through the lakes by boat. 
I dined here alone, the company being all out in the 
forests and on the waters. The dinner was splendid : 
trout, with egg sauce that any hotel in New York might 
be proud of, and venison such as Sydney Smith's epicu- 
rean neighbor never tasted. 

Launching our boat upon the Saranac at its first issue 
from the lake, we shot down the stream. It would be a ter- 
rible journey, but how grand to pursue it through lakes and 
rapids, and cataracts and mountain gorges and fertile 
plains, in the midst of millions of lumber rushing amain 
down, till at last, after a descent of 1500 feet, it empties 
into Lake Champlain away off at Plattsburg. We were 
carried along but a few miles into Round Lake, and 
through that into the broad, deep, swift current of the 
river, which, with little aid of oars, swept us rapidly on. 
After touching at the shore to drink from a spring which 
was indicated by a board, on which was written " Jacob's 
Well," we were soon ushered into the Lower Saranac 
Lake. A steady pull at the oars, at the close of a long 
day's rowing, when my guide might well be well worn, 
brought us in an hour to the eastern end of it. Just as 
I emerged from the lake, and at the verge of the forest, 
I encountered a bear. Instantly he rose upon his hind 
legs and thrust out his fore-paws, as if he were seeking a 
prime dinner. I thought of my revolver, but it was fifty 
miles awayj of my rifle, but it was in my study at home. 
He would not bear with me while I sought them to bore 
him. Just as he made a plunge toward me, a chain that 
went from his neck to a tree restrained him. That chain 
of circumstances saved me, and made me sure that he 
was not a beast to be feared. We are often frightened 
at bears as harmless as this. 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 125 

AMONG THE GUIDES. 

The bear was at Martin's. I spent the night at Mar- 
tin's. It is the largest hotel, except Paul Smith's, in the 
Adirondacks. Sportsmen and others often make this the 
first point on coming to the woods. Paul Smith's is the 
more civilized. This is rougher, but very comfortable. 

An outer court — a covered passage between the house 
and the offices, quarters for the guides and dogs — affords 
a breezy lounge, and here in the cool of the day the com- 
pany, tired with the day's work, enjoy the air and rest. 
One of the guides having been suddenly taken sick on 
the lakes, was brought up in the arms of his comrades, 
and a crowd pressed about him. No physician being on 
hand, I took the case, but the regular practice — a stiff 
glass of brandy — anticipated my prescriptions, and the 
man was better in the morning. 

This incident led one of the guides to sit down on 
the steps at my feet and beguile the evening with in- 
formation about the country, with which he had been 
familiar from his childhood. He thought but very little 
of it as a resort for consumptives, though many of them 
come here and go away nothing better, but a great deal 
worse. He told me a sad story of a young man brought 
in by his father, who doted on him with the " love of a 
mother" — as if that is more than a father's, as it is not; 
he tended the sick boy in camp, and ministered to him as 
well as he could, but the rough life of the woods is not 
for sick people. It makes well ones better ; men who 
have been worn down with work at home, brain work es- 
pecially, they come here and recruit splendidly. But the 
sick boy went home to die, and sick people would do 
well, if they do not get well, by staying away from these 



126 UNDER THE TREES. 

woods and waters. And t'hen my talking friend very 
easily wandered on to telling me of a family in his native 
town, in Essex County, who had the consumption as a 
family inheritance, and he dwelt tenderly on one of them 
— " She was only seventeen years old, as bright as a sil- 
ver dollar and as pretty as a doll ; her lips were white, 
and her hair was yellow, and her eyes were blue, and we 
did not want her to die. And she did not want to, but 
she said it would be just as well, and she would not fret j 
but the sweet little thing kind o' melted away like, and 
just went to sleep and never waked up ag'in." 

" Will she never wake up again ?" I said, softly. 

"Well, now. Mister, you put it to me, I know she will; 
but it was a good many years ago, when I was a younger 
man than what I am now, and she has slept on, and it 
has never been as light in the world to me as it was be- 
fore she went out. But the minister said at her funeral 
— and I never forgot how It sounded, as he stood by the 
coffin, and said — 'The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth.' 
Do you think she will ever come to us ag'in ?" 

" I think she is not far from you now, and that she is 
happier when you are good ; and that by-and-by you will 
pass away into the spirit world where she is, and, if you 
are pure and true, that you and she will be perfectly bless- 
ed forever. Did you ever hear these words, ' He that 
liveth and believeth shall never die ?' " 

" To be sure I have ; but we shall all die." 

" And yet not perish : die as these lakes and woods 
die in winter ; but spring comes, and every lake laughs 
in the noontide sun, and every woodland and meadow 
bursts into living beauty. You have seen it a score of 
times." 

" Yes, and more ; and I do like to hear you talk." 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 1 27 

" But you brought it on ; now go on with your own 
story. What good does any one get from coming here ?" 

" Rheumatism gits cured. The guides never have it — 
I ought not to say never, for I had it once myself, and I 
put a heap of balsam branches over the live coals of fire, 
and lay down on it and went to sleep, aching to kill with 
the rheumatism. The boughs did not blaze, but they 
burned some, and the smoke came up through, with the 
smell of the balsam, and it steamed away all the aches 
and pains, and I never had a touch of it after that." 

"You think it does a man good, then, to sleep in a 
swamp when he has the rheumatism ?" 

" Not as a general thing ; but if he will sleep on pine 
boughs, spruce, hemlock, balsam of fir, and such like, and 
keep dry, he will git over the rheumatism, sure." 

This friendly guide talked to me an hour or more, in 
the dark, and seemed pleased to have a ready listener. 
He told me much of the agricultural productions of the 
lower country, and of his hopes to be done with guiding 
travelers and going back to guiding the plow. It was a 
curious group by which I was surrounded : rough but in- 
telligent men, some lying flat on their backs, others half 
reclining, and some sitting on the steps, all attentive to 
the talk. In the course of it I managed to say some 
things they may think of afterward. 

Late, even for me, I went to bed. It had been a long 
and crowded day. Seven distinctly marked and beauti- 
ful lakes, deep, primitive, forests, with all the wondrously 
novel scenery of this strange wilderness, were now in my 
mind. As I was floating through it, the day seemed to 
me more like the dream into which I was sinking than 
any land or water journey I had ever made. But the 
dream was brighter, just as the ideal rarely fails to exceed 
the real. I slept, and was among the isles of the blest. 



128 UNDER THE TREES. 

AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. 

At six in the morning, after a hasty but hearty break- 
fast, I mounted a stage wagon, and was brought down 
into the town of North Elba, made famous as the resi- 
dence, and now the grave, of John Brown. This lies off 
the road, and the stage sometimes goes out of its way to 
enable travelers to view the spot. We were behind time, 
and the driver declined the extra mile. 

North Elba has a little village on a wide plain, with 
such surroundings as no other village may boast. An 
amphitheatre of mountains, some of them the highest in 
the State of New York, with an arc of sixty miles in ex- 
tent, forms on one side the magnificent framework in 
which this lonely hamlet sleeps. The gigantic group of 
mountains is the Adirondack region proper. Mounts 
Seward and Mclntyre and McMartin can be seen from 
almost any point, and Mount Marcy — the loftiest of them 
all — towers in its vast proportions, well deserving the 
name which the Indians gave it — The Cloud Splitter. It 
is 5467 feet high. A spring is on the very pinnacle, near 
a rude monument raised to Mr. Henderson, of Jersey 
City, whose death is still remembered and mourned by a 
wide circle of friends. He was a noble Scotch gentle- 
man, son-in-law of Archibald Mclntyre, and while en- 
gaged in the exploration and development of this iron re- 
gion, he was killed by the accidental discharge of a gun. 
The little lake by which the ,tragic event occurred is 
named Calamity., and a beautiful monument, wrought far 
away, was brought at great expense, and erected upon the 
spot where Mr. Henderson met his lamented death. 

In this town of North Elba is Lake Placid, which is 
celebrated as one of the most lovely of all the waters, and 



THE ADIRONDACKS. I29 

for a very remarkable lakelet that is close by, and joined 
by a narrow channel ; through this channel the water 
flows two or three minutes from the lake into the pond ; 
an interval of five seconds follows, with no apparent mo- 
tion of the water ; after this it flows back into the lake 
for two or three minutes, and this ebbing and flowing 
continue perpetually. 

The Au Sable River, after leaving Lake Placid, forgets 
its source and becomes raging and rapid, actually tearing 
its way through the mountains, and by finding or making 
a passage, gives to the traveler the White Face Pass, or 
Wilmington Notch, one of the grandest objects in nature. 
The narrow road by the side of the river is horrible. But 
on each hand a precipice, almost perpendicular, rises two 
thousand feet high. At noon we passed through it, and 
even at that hour we were in deep shadow, awed by the 
grandeur of the scene. In successive ages huge rocks 
have been hurled from these towering heights ; perhaps 
the earth itself has trembled till they fell ; the bolts of 
heaven have shattered them into fragments, and sent them 
tumbling into the abyss ; but the battlements still stand 
in silent majesty, impregnable and enduring as the globe. 
White Face Mountain is easily and constantly ascended 
from Wilmington, and from its summit the best view of 
the region can be obtained. My days for climbing are 
over. My ambition is satisfied. No steeple tempts me to 
aspire. I do not expect to climb another " while life and 
breath and being last." 

But the mountain region is the glory of this country. 
More than two hundred distinct peaks may be counted. 
And they are so compacted that their bases sometimes 
touch. So wildly disjointed and irregular is the system 
of mountains, it stands as though an ocean tossed by 

I 



130 UNDER THE TREES. 

tempest had been suddenly congealed, and these strange 
heights had in ages following become clothed and in 
their right mind. It has been only partially explored, 
but some of the passes have become famous, and they 
are more and more frequently visited by tourists. Many 
who have come here from Switzerland and New Hamp- 
shire are in ecstasies over or under the Adirondacks. 
One of the best of guides descants on the region a few 
miles only from Wilmington — Keene Flats — a point which 
the tourist to the mountains should be sure to make : 

" There is not another place in the state, and probably 
but a few on the globe, where there is so great a variety 
of scenery in so small a compass as is unfolded from the 
lower end of the Keene Flats to three miles above the 
Upper Au Sable Pond. In no equal space can there be 
found so great a variety of soil and climate which will 
yield any fruit grown North of Albany. Then its abun- 
dant groves of elm and maple, and the clear, cool fount- 
ains, render the whole surroundings a perfect summer 
bower, six miles long and one wide. 

" If one want a little exercise, let him climb Baxter 
Mountain, and he will see the whole Flats as if he looked 
from a high balcony upon the street below. If his taste 
incline him to streams, cascades, and waterfalls, he can 
find them in almost every form, from one foot to three 
hundred feet high. If he is desirous to ascend mountains, 
there is a trail to Hopkins's Peak, the Giant, Camel's 
Hump, and Hurricane. If he wish to ascend Mount 
Marcy, he can go through the woods by John's Brook and 
trail some eight or ten miles, or by the Ponds twelve 
miles, and only six of this distance by walking. If he is 
disposed to make the round trip (as many never do), he 
will go to the Ponds, thence over Marcy to Lake Golden, 



THE ADIRONDACKS. I31 

and by a side trip to Avalanche Lake and back to Col- 
den ; thence by Calamity Pond to Upper Adirondack. 
Rest there a day or two, if required, and then through 
the Indian Pass to Blin's or Scott's. The course may be 
reversed, but from North Elba it is more difficult and un- 
certain as to boats. ' 

" I have made this trip in four days, and have taken 
twelve. The trip embraces the most wild mountain and 
gorge scenery in the region — Lower Pond, Panther's 
Gorge, Lake Avalanche, and Indian Pass. It also takes 
in the most beautiful lakes — Au Sable Pond, Lakes Col- 
den and Avalanche, Calamity Pond, Lakes Henderson 
and Sanford, and as many other wild scenes as he can 
imagine." 

A stage ride through the White Face Notch has in it 
some of the elements of the sublime, for the road is terri- 
ble. It is better in this, the dry season, than at any other 
time, and now it is as bad as bad can well be. Wrecks of 
wagons by the narrow roadside told us the fate of trav- 
elers who had preceded us. Two young ladies, the day 
before, had been obliged to tramp four miles in the blaz- 
ing sun of noonday, while the driver rode the horses to 
Wilmington, leaving the dilapidated vehicle in the Notch. 
Our ride was safe, but slow. The horses had a long pull 
of it, and a strong pull, but brought us to the Point of 
Rocks in season for the five o'clock train for Plattsburg. 

To take a seat in a comfortable car on the rails, after 
having been ten hours jolted in a rough wagon over the 
roughest road that bears such a name, was a relief too 
great for words. But the ride was through a grand region 
of country, the scenery richly repaying the traveler for his 
toils. To me it was but pleasant exercise, the fatigue 
being speedily forgotten, while the memory of the magnif- 



132 UNDER THE TREES. 

icence of nature remains as a perpetual refreshment and 
delight. As I drew the contrast continually between this 
wilderness, out of which I had come, and that artificial 
wilderness of shops and palaces where I must soon resort 
and abide, the oft-quoted lines of Dr. Beattie, in the " Min- 
strel," would come to me, and I repeated them aloud— 

" Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store 
Of charms which Nature to her votary yields ? — 
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, 
The pomp of groves and garniture of fields ; 
All that the genial ray of morning gilds, 
And all that echoes to the song of even ; 
All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, 
And all the dread magnificence of heaven — 
Oh ! how canst thou renounce and hope to be forgiven .'" 

For I had now seen somewhat of the lakes and mount- 
ains of the Adirondacks, and had endured no more hard- 
ship than attends all mountain travel : had slept every 
night in an excellent hotel, had three civilized meals every 
day, had worn the same clothing that I wear at home, had 
not been bitten by a musquito or a fly, had encountered 
none of the horrors of the wilderness described by pre- 
ceding tourists — the only bear being chained — and had 
been less than a week in performing the journey. It is 
true I did not assassinate a deer. That exploit I shall 
not be able to boast of at the social board during the 
coming winter. My brethren of the pulpit and the press, 
who know how to draw a longer bow than I, have all the 
honors of the chase. 

They who have not visited this region of our own coun- 
try, as I had not, but have been over all Europe and into 
Asia and Africa in search of the beautiful and the sublirrfe, 
have left yet unseen and therefore unenjoyed some of the 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 133 

most singular and interesting scenery in the world. The 
mere map of the country is a curiosity. It lies before 
me with the mountains piled up on one side of it, and the 
one hundred lakes on the other half of the sheet, with the 
many rivers streaming among the hills. But the forests 
are not on the map, and the sun .does not light up the 
world and make all these woods and waters marvelous in 
their native sohtude and grandeur. No such loneliness 
ever dwelt around me : a pleasing, sacred, holy peace, not 
a painful solitude, as if lost or far from friends ; but as if 
the Lord God were walking in his garden unseen of man ; 
and I alone, yet not alone, because he was there. Just 
about the smallest nonsense in the wide world is that 
which ignores God as a living, present, pervading Being 
and Power in the midst of his own creation. There 
might be some excuse for it in the city which man is said 
to have made. This great Babylon had a builder, and 
men saw him, and they called him a god. Art confesses 
and proclaims an artist. No fool was ever so much an 
idiot as to suppose that Venus in the Florentine tribune, 
and Apollo in the Vatican, sprang from the Parian quarry 
without hands, and clothed themselves with beauty that' 
charms the sense and makes their memory a lifelong joy. 
Our living artists paint Niagara and the Yosemite Vale, and 
no one dreams that the paints came into color by elective 
affinity or chance, and then meandered along the canvas 
into forms of majestic beauty that bear some faint image 
of the forests of the Almighty, his rainbow and cataracts. 
Yet these admiring art critics, and others greater than 
they, will walk in the midst of nature, radiant with loveli- 
ness and glory, compared with which this art work is but 
the sport of children playing with brush and chisel, and 
pretend to believe that all this comes of itself : that no 



134 UNDER THE TREES. 

great Architect planned and spanned the arch of the 
heavens and set the sun in the firmament ; that no skill 
of the artist painted these lilies with living white and 
green, and bathed these mountains and lakes, forests and 
shores, with exquisite loveliness, whose only but sufficient 
end appears to be the pleasure of those who come to see 
and admire. The sense of sublimity has not indeed 
possessed me so fully as that of beauty while here, and 
awe has not shadowed the soul in the midst of the 
wondrous loveliness of wild woodland scenes ; but so 
little of man's work is around, and so much of God's, that 
I have again and again fallen back upon Coleridge in the 
"Vale of Chamounix,"and rehearsed his great psalm as the 
only fitting interpretation of the believing soul when Nat- 
ure, in naked majesty and beauty, stands before it, and it 
longs for words in which to float as part of the living uni- 
verse praising its animating Maker. Read this with me, 
and our tour among the mountains, lakes, and waterfalls 
of the Adirondacks will be closed : 

" Awake, my soul ! not only passive praise 
Thou owest ! not alone these swelling tears, 
Mute thanks, and secret ecstasy ! Awake, 
Voice of sweet song ! Awake, my Heart, awake ! 
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn. 

" Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the Vale ! 
O struggling with the darkness all the night, 
And visited all night by troops of stars. 
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink : 
Companion of the morning-star at dawn. 
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn 
Co-herald : wake, O wake, and utter praise ! 
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth ? 
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light ? 
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams .' 



THE ADIRONDACKS. 135 

" And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad ! 
Who called you forth from night and utter death, 
From dark and icy caverns called you forth, 
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, 
Forever shattered and the same forever ? 
Who gave you your invulnerable life, 
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, 
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam ? 
And who commanded (and the silence came). 
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest? 

" Ye ice-falls ! ye that from the mountain's brow 
Adown enormous ravines slope amain — 
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice. 
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge ! 
Motionless torrents ! silent cataracts ! 
Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven 
Beneath the keen full moon ? Who bade the sun 
Clothe you with rainbows ? Who, with living flowers 
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet ? — 
God ! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, 
Answer ! and let the ice-plains echo, God ! 
God ! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice ! 
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds ! 
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow. 
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God ! 

"Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! 
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest ! 
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm ! 
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds ! 
Ye signs and wonders of the element ! 
.Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise ! 

" Thou, too, hoar Mount ! with thy sky-pointing peaks, 
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, 
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene 
Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast — 
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain ! thou 
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low- 
In adoration, upward from thy base 



136 UNDER THE TREES. 

Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears, 
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud, 
To rise before me — Rise, O ever rise, 
Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth ! 
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills, 
Thou dread embassador from Earth to Heaven, 
Great hierarch ! tell thou the silent sky, 
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, 
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God." 



XVI. 

WITH THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS. 

Leaving the Adirondacks, crossing Lake Champlain 
and Vermont, I sought the White Hills of New Hamp- 
shire. By rail to Wells River Junction, and then to Lit- 
tleton, was a charming ride. 

That brother of mine who was fishing in the Adiron- 
dacks so marvelously a month before was waiting with 
his carriage for me at the foot of the mountains. Leav- 
ing the stages to come at their leisure, we wound our way 
along and up, easily beating them two hours in twelve 
miles. Nearly half-way we pass through the straggling 
village of Franconia, where the mercury falls lower in 
winter and gets higher in summer than in any other place 
in the country. It has been sometimes supposed they 
have thermometers of peculiar construction, to produce 
such remarkable results ; but they claim to use Fahren- 
heit only, and to reach 40° below without much incon- 
venience, when at Boston or New York the coldest inhab- 
itant can not boast of any thing below 10°. The village 
bears the same name with the Franconia Mountains, sep- 
arated from the White by a narrow defile ; but, in fact, 
the Franconia and the White are parts of the same sys- 
tem of hills, called often the Switzerland of America by 
people who never saw the Alps. We are now ascending 
the heights. Six miles of a winding, narrow, wooded 
road, toiling upward, we beguile the way with gentle dis- 



138 UNDER THE TREES. 

course. I pull out a book and read of the joys that are 
before me. The gushing Eastman, who has illustrated 
the region, chants the praises of Franconia in such glow- 
ing words as these : 

" Here is rest, here is comfort. Beneath the shadow 
of these mountains the weary soul finds composure." 
[Just the place for poor worn-out writers to seek.] " Self- 
ishness and worldliness are rebuked." [Of course, the 
bears and bulls of Wall Street will not come here to be 
rebuked.] "The most thoughtless are hushed to reflec- 
tion, and a better understanding of life grows up in the 
midst of Nature's grand instructions." [I can not devel- 
op such thoughts out of the scenes around me, and must 
keep on quoting. Our guide continues — he means you 
and me now, when he says] — " We do not suppose our 
tourist is in quest of mere pleasure : we believe him to 
be a better and nobler man than to spend his days thus. 
He is open to every good influence that will make life 
more rich and beautiful and fair. There is no better in- 
fluence than that of which he will be sensible in the still 
retreat of Franconia." 

And with such soothing and, at the same time, cheering 
assurances, we reached the strange plateau on which, in 
the midst of Franconia Notch, stands the Profile House. 
A plain of a few cleared acres in extent, in a gorge that 
admits the passage of a narrow carriage-way, mountains 
two thousand feet high rising almost perpendicularly on 
each side, with two lovely lakes lying under the hills and 
skirted with forests, has been chosen as a summer resort 
and the site of a magnificent hotel, in which five hundred 
guests find refreshment and a cool retreat from the torrid 
heats that blight the world below. It is never hot at the 
Profile House. 



WITH THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS. 139 

It is not always fair weather up here. To say that it 
does not rain frequently would not be an honest report 
if one were keeping a record of the season. Indeed, 
there is a great tendency in the direction of rain, and the 
rain has a decided tendency to come down. Clouds rare- 
ly get into this cool gorge without being condensed into 
showers. But they are short, and the bright shining after 
the rain is more enjoyable always than if it had not rained 
at all. 

The huge crag at which we are gazing as we sit upon 
the piazza is called Eagle Cliff, and one never wearies of 
its contemplation. Like the ocean, mountains are ever 
new to one who thinks while he sees. They would be 
moral teachers, if human nature could be reached by such 
influences. It is probably never touched by them. So 
far as the tables show, there is no marked difference in 
the moral character of people who live in and out of such 
scenery as this. Climate has its effect, but the scenery 
none. Yet the thought is led up by these mountains to 
the everlasting, as the sea speaks of the infinite. Both 
are sermons. " Thy righteousness is like the great mount- 
ains," exclaimed the Jewish bard, who had never seen 
any thing greater than Carmel or Horeb. And there is 
a little of the superstitious mingled with the sentiment 
that is inspired by the profile of the Old Man of the 
Mountain, the presiding genius of this Notch and the 
grand feature of the place. I have seen the Sphinx by 
the side of the Pyramid of Cheops— a solemn, majestic, 
human face looking over the valley of the Nile, as if within 
the stone resided the divinity of that mysterious land. 
Fut the Sphinx was carved by the hand of man. It had 
a maker like ourselves, and we are therefore greater than 
the Sphinx. 



140 UNDER THE TREES. 

But there, away up against the clouds, nearly two thou- 
sand feet in the air, out upon the crag that terminates 
Canon Mountain, itself the utmost precipice, far away 
from the reach of human ingenuity or human daring — sol- 
itary in repose, sublime in its awful elevation — there is the 
mighty human face, with every feature as distinct and 
perfect and symmetrical as if Thorwaldsen had come to 
Franconia, as he went to Lucerne, to carve a rock into an 
everlasting monument. One's emotions are strange as 
he looks upon it for the first or the hundredth time. 
Has the Old Man, as the face is called, been there al- 
ways ? Does he think ? At the beginning of this cent- 
ury, when the path was cleared through the Notch, the 
face of the Old Man was seen, looking away into the East, 
and down into the Pemigewasset Valley to the rising 
sun. His countenance is fixed, for it has never changed 
in the century. Millions of people have come and gone; 
the natives have disappeared ; civilization has set in upon 
the forests ; and the bears have yielded to the incoming 
of the luxury of cities, but the Old Man says — " None of 
these things move me." Often the clouds hide him in 
impenetrable gloom. Again the mist depends from his 
chin like a heavy gray beard, and the wind sweeps it 
back from his forehead as if his hoar locks were stream- 
ing in the gale. Then the sun lights up his face with a 
smile of amazing brightness and beauty, and his lips ap- 
pear to be parted, as though he were about to address 
the nations. 

The awe abates when we go to another point of ob- 
servation, and see that the face is not carved or even 
formed by the peculiar shape of any one precipice or 
rock, but is the accidental result of the happy location of 
several crags some distance apart, which happen to come 



WITH THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS. 141 

into such lines and relations that at one particular point 
of observation they are so blended as to form the outline 
of the human face. Then the wonder becomes greater 
that it should be a- face at all, but the sense of its pres- 
ence as of a human head is dissipated, and we smile at 
the delusion whose strange fascination we had felt be- 
fore. 

" It is good for us to be here," said a disciple to the 
Master, on the top of a mountain. It is good to be any 
where with him. Let us stay here a while and rest. We 
are above the world while in it. By-and-by, all too soon, 
we will go down to work. 

The luxury of nothing to do becomes irksome after a 
while. We do not seek it as much as we ought. Per- 
haps we ought not to work so much and so hard as to 
need it. But two or three hundred men in the mount- 
ains, shut up in a tavern for a month or more, find time 
heavy on their hands, and must resort to some means to 
kill it. 

Here, at the Profile House, we have few out-of-door 
amusements. The mountains are so close upon us, pre 
cipitous and craggy, that no ordinary mortal man will find 
entertainment in carrying a rifle and climbing in search 
of game that has long since fled to parts unknown. The 
fisliing is good in the little lakes that are close by the 
house, and a few of the guests are devoted votaries of the 
rod. Out of these lakes the waters find their way through 
awful gorges, wild ravines, huge rocks, making barriers 
over which the torrents tumble in their dark and mad 
plunges toward the sea. The adventurous fisherman, in 
love with the sport, not counting his life dear, but daring 
all things for the sake of what he calls sport, follows these 
mountain streams adown the deep abysses, crossing them 



142 UNDER THE TREES. 

at times astride a fallen hemlock which spans a deep 
gulf far beneath this giddy bridge of a single, shaky, rot- 
ten tree ; or he leaps boldly across the chasm, as did the 
priest with the maiden on the St. Gothard Pass in the 
Alps ; or he slides down the slope of a long declivity, too 
steep for him to walk, too far for a jump, and brings up 
below, all standing on the flat of his back. 

These dangers and hardships have their exhilarations, 
and those with nerve and muscle to endure them are re- 
warded, not so much by the beautiful fish they take under 
such difficulties, as by the health and strength they gath- 
er for the sterner conflicts which, as fishers of men or 
workers in some other field of useful labor, they must en- 
counter when the play-spell is over. 

But the most of us are not equal to such. amusements. 
We could not, if we would, attempt them, and probably 
would not if we could. To sit on the piazza, with one's 
heels on a level with his head, smoking a cigar and talk- 
ing politics or stocks with a friend, isthe chief amusement 
of the average American taking his summer vacation. 
Two or three times a day the stages arrive with loads of 
new prisoners, and their arrival is a new topic of talk for 
five or ten minutes. Perhaps a live judge, or a governor, 
or a candidate has come, and diverts for a moment the cur- 
rent of conversation, which Soon resumes its channel, and 
flows on as languidly as the Passaic seeking the sea. A 
few, to whom talk is tedious, or whose talk is tedious, cul- 
tivate whist. In the middle of the day, and day after day, 
and all day long, a learned judge, a learned lawyer, a suc- 
cessful broker, and a portly railroad president sit at a lit- 
tle table and silently, solemnly, and earnestly amuse them- 
selves' matching bits of pasteboard, on which are grotesque 
pictures. My knowledge of the art and science of cards 



WITH THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS. I43 

is just equal to that of the courtier of whom the king 
asked — 

" Do you not play cards ?" 

" No, your majesty, I can not tell a king from a knave." 

The end of the season was approaching, and the few 
days remaining must be enlivened with something to make 
a stir in the mountains. Practical jokes had been ex- 
hausted. Bogus news had been repeated till general 
skepticism prevailed. It was now announced that the 
" circus " was coming, and, more remarkable, would be 
exhibited in the grand parlor of the Profile House. A 
circus in the parlor was a novelty — indeed, without a par- 
allel. The handbills were issued in flaming capitals and 
characters. 

The performance far exceeded the promise. It is quite 
impossible to imagine fifty (some of them) grave and ven- 
erable men, all of them intelligent and cultivated people, 
by means of picturesque, burlesque, and comical dresses, 
shawls and feathers, bear and buffalo robes, converting 
themselves into the most amusing representations of ani- 
mals. At the appointed hour the parlor was seated with 
elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen and children, four 
hundred in number, in concentric circles, leaving the cen- 
tre of the long room, a hundred feet, clear for the perform- 
ance. At the sound of the trumpet the cavalcade entered: 
the elephant led by four keepers ; then the bear and gi- 
raffes, and Dr. Darwin followed, leading his ancestor, the 
ape ; and then the whole retinue, as advertised ; and the 
several parties performed their roles to the unbounded 
entertainment of the applauding assembly. 

At another time it was announced that Horace Greeley 
was to arrive at 8 o'clock in the evening, and would be 
received with appropriate honors in the parlor. The stage 



144 UNDER THE TREES. 

arrived at the time, and in the centre of it sat a man with 
a mask head of Greeley on his shoulders, twice as large 
as life and twice as like. An escort of colored citizens 
and Indians in costume attended him. The band played 
" Hail to the Chief," and the populace greeted him with 
cheers. He was led to the parlor, where a platform was 
erected, and upon it stood the Governor of the State of 
New York, not a sham, but the genuine Governor, who in 
his summer travel, fortunately, was a guest at the Profile 
House when this reception occurred. The Greeley being 
presented, thus the Governor began : 

" Mr. Greeley, — It was expected that Governor Straw, 
of New Hampshire, would be here to-night to welcome you 
to this one of your many birthplaces. But he is absent — 
straws show which way the wind blows — and it devolves 
upon me, the Governor of the state next to New Hamp- 
shire in resources and population, to bid you welcome to 
the freedom of this house, from the office to the bar. This 
ceremony, it is understood, has no political significance; 
indeed, like a modern popular sermon, it has nothing to 
do with politics or religion. I was out this afternoon 
looking at the Old Man of the Mountain, and seeing a 
benevolent smile upon his face, I asked him what pleased 
him so, and he replied, ' Horace is coming.' " [Great 
applause.] 

In this pleasant way the Governor discoursed to the 
imaginary Greeley for a few minutes. 

As this burlesque was performed in the midst of the 
presidential canvass, and included among its performers 
men of all sorts of political relations, it was evidently ap- 
preciated and enjoyed as a fitting epilogue in the great 
farce then convulsing the nation. 

In such sports as these the dwellers at the Profile 



WITH THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAINS. 145 

House amused one another during the last days of their 
sojourn among the mountains. They had a mock trial, 
at which one of the best judges presided, and near him, 
with all gravity, sat one of the judges of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, while eminent lawyers made 
as desperate efforts to amuse the audience as they ever 
did to clear a rogue at home. 

Sunday came. And then it was good to see that rest, 
such as the Sabbath invites, does not require amusements 
to make it thoroughly enjoyable. The same grand par- 
lor, which the evening previous had been given up to in- 
nocent play, was now filled with the same audience, 
reverently assembled to worship God. They were of all 
religious persuasions, but I do not know that one in the 
house was absent because of the faith of him who was to 
conduct the service. It was the wish of the company 
that I should take this duty, and it was pleasant to lead 
such a multitude, all away from home, unknown to each 
other, and nearly all of them so to me, but all children 
of the same Father, and seeking the same home in his 
house. And with what fervor did we sing that morning, 
and again in the evening, when we met for social praise, 
the old familiar hymns, some that had rung out from the 
lips of martyrs, and all of them the joy of saints whose 
feet now tread the higher courts and whose voices make 
the melodies among the heavenly hills : 

" They stand, those halls of Zion, 

Conjubilant with song, 
And bright with many an angel 

And all the martyr throng. 

•' The Prince is ever in them, 
The daylight is serene ; 
The pastures of the blessed 
Are decked in glorious sheen. 
K 



146 UNDER THE TREES. 

"There is the throne of David, 
And there, from care released, 
The song of them that triumph, 
The shout of them that feast. 

" And they who with their Leader 
Have conquered in the fight. 
Forever and forever 
Are clad in robes of white." 



XVII. 

MEMORIES OF ITALY. 

Lying here under the trees, my soul often goes away 
to other lands, and lives in the climes and scenes it has 
enjoyed in years gone by. I have often looked on the 
face of a man asleep, and its vacuity suggested the idea 
that his soul was on its travels elsewhere. And as I re- 
cline beneath these deep shadows, in the heat of this sum- 
mer day, though my eyes are open, I dream, and the dream 
is of Italy. I will tell you what I saw when there, and 
what is as vivid now as if we were yesterday in the Land 
of the Beautiful. , 

It was nine at night when we had reached Florence 
and supped, and then it was time to go to bed ; for we 
had made a long day of it. What with getting ashore at 
Leghorn ; running the gauntlet of all sorts of officials 
and non-officials ; having our luggage twice searched and 
plumbed to go from one town to another in the same king- 
dom ; then coming up to Pisa, and stopping there under 
the shadow of that wondrous Leaning Tower, which leans 
as it has leaned for six hundred years, and, as it seems to 
me, leans still more than it did years ago, when I swung 
myself out from the iron rail around the ninth story of it, 
and tried to see the base from the summit, and could 
not ; having toiled up the winding stairway that Galileo 
so often ascended and descended in the pursuit of science 
— for here he tested the velocity of falling bodies — and 



148 UNDER THE TREES. 

then walking through the Cathedral, where still hangs, 
and sometimes swings, the lamp which set the same grand 
philosopher on the track of the pendulum, whose constant 
movement, silent and steady, in every palace, hall, and 
home in the civilized world has, perhaps, been and will 
be as useful to mankind, in teaching the measure and val- 
ue of time, as any thing they will learn this side of eter- 
nity ; and then looking into the Campo Santo, not less 
memorable for the great and good who are buried in it 
than for the genius and fame of the painters whose works, 
once thought to be immortal, 'are even now fading from 
the eye that strains its vision to catch departing beauty, 
as if the figures were angels fast disappearing; and sculpt- 
ure so ancient, rescued from distant tombs, that the names 
of the mighty makers have long since been buried beyond 
the sound of the trumpet of fame, which is no resurrection 
trump, but only heralds the names of those whom the 
world will not let die; and the very ground of the Campo 
Santo was brought from the Holy Land, and perchance 
may be itself the dust of patriarchs and apostles, as the 
ground we daily tread once lived; I was saying we had 
paused at Pisa, and spent the balance of the day in the 
midst of these old monuments and wonders of science 
and art, and, wearied with seeing and thinking, had turned 
away and come on to Florence in the evening. 

All around, not alone in the palaces of the Medicis and 
the Pittis, nor in Santa Maria Novella, the Bride of Mi- 
chael Angelo ; nor in Santa Croce, where is his tomb, by 
the side of Dante's, and face to face with Galileo's ; but 
all around us in the streets and the piazzas, and on the 
bridges over the Arno, were forms of beauty whose pres- 
ence makes an atmosphere of art, filling Florence with a 
fragrance that belongs to no other city on earth ; and we 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 1 49 

could not go to sleep till we had walked out in the midst 
of them, even if we could catch but the graceful outlines 
of these creations of other days. We walked up the Arno 
to the Uffizi, and under its arches and along the terrace 
passed between rows of statues of great men gone, and 
into the Piazza della Signoria, and there the handiwork 
of Michael Angelo in David, and Bandinelli's Hercules, 
and the Sabine woman, by John of Bologna, were lumi- 
nous in the dark, as we greeted their familiar forms. Yet 
we walked on, pilgrims from a land unknown when Ci- 
mabue found Giotto tending sheep hard by this fair city 
that now glories in being the early home of both, and 
treasures their works among her priceless crowns of art. 
We went on looking upward to catch sight of the Dubmo, 
and soon we were on the spot where Dante was wont to 
sit, and gazing on the wondrously suspended and sup- 
ported dome of this great cathedral, whose architects, Ar- 
nolfe and Brunelleschi, now sit here in stone, as if sur- 
veying their own stupendous work. And there rose to 
the near heavens — for in the night its crown was hardly 
visible — there rose the Campanile, so massive, majestic, 
and sublime in its proportions, as it is beautiful beyond 
comparison, by daylight, in its marbles of every color — 
the most perfect bell-tower in the wide world. We could 
not see the bronze doors of the Baptistery, the early 
works of Ghiberti, who spent upon them forty years of 
his life, and left them as his monument ; but we reserved 
these, and all we had only caught glimpses of, and this 
whole cityful of ancient and modern art, to be studied 
and enjoyed in successive days and weeks at hand. 

This was enough for one day. In the morning on the 
sea ; in the afternoon, with the weight of centuries on us, 
at Pisa; in the evening wandering along the ways of 



15° 



UNDER THE TREES. 



Florence, so often pressed by the feet of old poets and 
world-famed statesmen, and artists that neither Greece 
nor Rome, in the palmiest days of their art triumphs, ex- 
celled ; now, as midnight drew near, standing midway of 
the Arno, on the Santa Trinita, which has stood, just as 
it now stands, for three hundred years, adorned with four 
statues as its corners, representing the four seasons of the 
year ; and thence looking at the long lines of lamps on 
either hand, reduplicated in the waters, above and below, 
as far as the city stretches on both sides of this silver 
stream, was it strange — willing as the soul might be to lin- 
ger and dream away the night in the first joy of the em- 
brace of so much loveliness and glory — that the flesh was 
weary ? And so we entered our hotel, on the bank of 
the river by the Ponte Alia Carraja, and were soon at 
rest. , 

And yet not at rest. For here, into this very house, 
the first time I was in Florence, I had come with a young 
friend, on whom sickness laid its fevered hand almost as 
soon as he came, and day after day he faded away from 
the life and joy of the beautiful Florence he had sought 
with me, till at last, while a dear friend held one hand of 
the dying and I the other, death came and bore his spirit 
to the better land. The frightened Italian servants, look- 
ing in at the window from the balcony, said inquiringly, 
" Morto ? morto ?" and we answered, " Yes ; dead, dead." 
And from this house, in a chill November morning, before 
eight o'clock, as the laws of the country then required, we 
bore him out to his far-from-home grave. 

It was hard to sleep in a room haunted with such mem- 
ories ; yet with thoughts of better rest and fairer scenes, 
and bliss that knows no weariness, decay, nor night — 
beauty in everlasting spring, and a crown that fadeth not 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 151 

away — I slept sweetly, and awoke with a heart and mind 
and frame rejoicing, with every string of the thousand of 
this wondrous harp in tune, to enjoy the harmonies of art 
and song in Florence the Beautiful. 

The time was when Florence had the reputation of be- 
ing the pleasantest and the cheapest place to winter in. 
It is not so pleasant, and it is not so cheap as it once 
was, and the reason why you will learn by degrees, as we 
did. Still it is, as compared with any other capital in 
Europe, both pleasant and cheap, and in many respects 
the most attractive. What it oncie was, it'J^ill not^e 
again ; yet it has riches of beauty, and monuments of 
genius, and trophies of art, and memories in story and 
song, that will make it sacred and glorious in the eyes of 
all with taste to appreciate its treasures. And to many 
its charms are ravishing. " See Naples and die," was 
the old-time saying ; but, having seen Naples and Flor- 
ence and, midway, Rome, I would rather see and enjoy 
what is in Florence than all in both her rival sisters. 

With a list of " apartments to let," we set out the first 
morning to find a home for the few weeks we had to stay ; 
and, after running and riding some hours, were so fortu- 
nate as to find just the quarters of all others that we 
would most desire. 

Casa Guidi is one of the historical mansions of Flor- 
ence. It is on the Piazza San Felice, just where it opens 
on the Pitti Palace, the late residence of the Grand-Duke 
of Tuscany, and the later residence of Victor Emanuel. 
Casa Guidi is our home in Florence. For many years 
past, like many other old palaces in this city, it has been 
"let " in apartments, and so distinguished have been some 
of its modern tenants that it has become more famous as 
their residence than as the house of the Guidi. It was in 



152 UNDER THE TREES. 

this palace that Mrs. EHzabeth Barrett Browning resided 
for many years. Here I made her acquaintance in the 
year 1853. Here Mrs. Browning wrote some of her best 
poems, and to one of the most spirited and feeling she 
gave the name " Casa Guidi Windows," for out of these 
windows she saw the scenes therein portrayed, and which 
predicted to her prophetic spirit the future glory of Italy. 
Here she died. With her husband .and only child she 
had come in from the country, in feeble health, but with 
no expectation of approaching death. The good woman 
who now lets the chambers was with her then, and told 
me the incidents of her last days. She was called sud- 
denly at the last, but went away cheerfully, to sing sweeter 
songs with the angels. The city of Florence has caused 
a marble slab to be placed over the portal of this man- 
sion, on which is inscribed in Italian — 

" Here wrote and died 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 

Who in the heart of woman combined the wisdom of the learned 

and the spirit of poetry, and made of her verse a golden ring uniting 

Italy and England. Grateful Florence placed this memorial, 1861." 

In the room where I was writing, and at the same 
table, wrote Mrs. Jameson, whose works on " Sacred and 
Legendary Art," " Legends of the Madonna," " Italian 
Painters," and " Loves of the Poets," etc., are text-books 
for students and travelers in Italy. A few doors below, 
Sismondi wrote his history ; Motley, bur American histo- 
rian, had his chambers; Hawthorne was a little way on 
the other side ; and Miss Mulock, and how many more I 
have not time to write. The Machiavelli house is close 
by, and I have been up and down its stone stairway a 
score of times, wondering always how many statesmen 
and priests and women have been there before me. We 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 1 53 

have rooms on the first floor — that is, up one flight of 
stairs, looking out on the Square and the end of the Pit- 
ti Palace. Our parlor, eighteen by twenty feet, and as 
many high, is handsomely furnished, and the bed-cham- 
bers adjoining are supplied abundantly. The greatest 
inconvenience we endure is from the cold, for the idea of 
an American stove, or a modern civilized fire-place, has 
not reached this capital of science and art. Our fire- 
place is indescribable. The wood that costs us half a 
dollar would not last us a day, if we kept the fire going ; 
and if it go out, we must go out, too, and get warm. 
Many of the palatial residences and thousands of the 
humbler dwellings have no fires in them, and no chim- 
neys. Ladies sit all day with an earthen kettle in their 
laps or at their feet, filled with hot embers, and ofttimes 
they upset them ; and some carry them in the street, and 
enjoy them when they make calls. They are called scal- 
dini, and are very poor comforters, even when wrapped up 
and put to bed, as they are sometimes in place of our an- 
cient warming-pans. Lady Morgan, in her charming vol- 
umes of travel in Italy, speaks of a visit she made, in 
November, at a villa near Florence : 

" The evening was intensely cold, and we were struck 
upon this occasion, as upon many similar ones, by the in- 
sensibility of the Italians to the influence of cold. For 
our accommodation a wood fire was lighted in one of the 
few hearths which this large villa contained, but no one 
ventured to approach it but ourselves. When the Rus- 
sian Czar, Paul the First, visited Florence, he went shud- 
dering about from sight to sight, observing, * In Russia, 
one sees the cold ; in Italy, one feels it.' The common 
people of Tuscany only approach fire for culinary pur- 
poses, and females of all ranks move about with their 



154 UNDER THE TREES. 

scaldini hanging on their arms. When seated, they place 
it under their petticoats ; and this, in the extremest cold, 
is the only artificial heat they resort to." 

So Lady Morgan says ; and I have seen all she de- 
scribes. I learn also that judges, when they enter court 
and take their seats on the bench, bring their scaldini with 
them, and warm their fingers, to soften their own trials. 
A lawyer, one day, leaped up, in great wrath, to reply to 
something," and flourished his earthen kettle of coals in 
his furious gesticulation. 

Every step to be taken in the "city of Florence has a 
story to it. History has done much to preserve and 
transmit the interest that invests the palaces, monuments, 
bridges, public squares, and private houses. Poetry has 
done more. It is a city of the Muses. It is itself almost 
a poem. Its air is full of song. Tradition has been more 
busy with the stones of Florence than the pen or pencil. 

It is hard to say which are the most numerous, tales of 
love or tales of blood, in this beautiful Italy. It is a sin- 
gular feature in human nature that the love of the beau- 
tiful and that of the tragical is so often blended in the 
same breast. I went to see an exhibition of the recent 
works by native artists. Its object is similar to that of 
our National Academy's annual exposition. And the 
greatest picture — that which attracts the most attention, 
elicits the warmest eulogies, and holds the most conspic- 
uous place in the gallery — is a story of love and blood. 
A wife, still young and beautiful, detecting the secret ad- 
miration of her husband for a former rival of hers, has 
contrived to get her into her power, has cut off her pretty 
head, and, having nicely arranged it in a basket of flowers, 
with the yellow locks of hair lying neatly among them, 
she is bringing the precious present to be offered to her 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 155 

husband when he comes home. It reminded me of a 
similar incident, the scene of which is also laid in Flor- 
ence. A wife is sitting in front of her mirror, and her 
pretty maid is arranging her hair. Her husband is just 
leaving the room to go on a journey, and as he passes out 
of the door the wife detects in the mirror a look which he 
gives to the maid, and it rouses the fire of jealousy in her 
burning heart. He goes. She says nothing ; but before 
he returns she has led the poor girl, perhaps more inno- 
cent of evil than herself, to the cellar of the palace, and 
into a recess in the wall, where solid masonry soon con- 
signs her to a living grave and lingering death, a wretch- 
ed victim of a wife's jealousy and hate. In the St. Luke 
Gallery at Rome is a solemn picture that shows a vestal 
virgin sitting in a dungeon ; thus immured, a small lamp 
burns at her feet, while she waits for that release which 
death only can bring. 

Every day we are passing the square called the Piazza 
Santa Trinita. The City Hall stands upon one side of it, 
and in the centre is a granite column, once in Rome, in the 
Baths of Antoninus, and which Pius IV. presented to Cos- 
imus I., the first of the Medici, who won the title of Father 
of his Country. It is surmounted by a statue of Justice, 
who, like the one on our City Hall in New York, holds in 
her hand a pair of scales. A few steps farther on is a 
famous palace, that of the Strozzi, built in 1489. Severe 
as its principal front is, its great cornice, by Cronaca, is 
justly regarded as an admirable work even in this city 
of art triumphs. Many, many years ago — so long ago 
that it is not important to fix the date — one of the ladies 
of the household lost her diamond necklace. The, maid 
who had charge of her toilet was suspected of the theft, 
and when accused protested her innocence. It seemed 



156 UNDER THE TREES. 

to be impossible to account for the loss in any other way, 
and to make the girl confess her guilt she was put to the 
torture, and the awful secret drawn out of her by rack and 
fire. It is common for the victims of this inquisitorial 
process to confess, and probably the innocent confess 
more readily than the guilty. The hardihood of crime 
may endure when sweet innocence sinks under suffering. 
The hapless maiden, when her joints are drawn asunder 
by the tightening ropes and wheel, will accuse herself of 
any crime in the sad hope of speedy release by pardon or 
the finishing stroke of death. Perhaps this poor Italian 
maid was thus made to confess. At any rate, she was 
condemned to die for the dreadful crime of robbing her 
mistress. This was law then, and many years have not 
passed since it was law in England. She was put to 
death at the foot of this granite column, on which the 
statue, a female divinity, was standing, and, as if in mock- 
ery, holding out the scales of justice. It is not related 
that the statue wept or groaned in sympathy with the 
cruel tragedy enacted in her name and at her feet. It is 
not even said that the beautiful mistress was unwilling to 
look out from her palace window upon the scene, when 
the young life of her fair maid was crushed out of her in 
the midst of a crowd that always relishes the sight of 
blood. But it is recorded that, shortly after the tragedy 
was over, a thunder-storm arose, a flash of lightning struck 
the scales in the hand of Justice, and down fell the nest 
of a jackdaw, and out of that fell the diamond necklace, 
for the theft of which an innocent girl had just suffered a 
cruel death. The scales still. swing in the statue's hand, 
but the goddess has no power to call back the poor creat- 
ure who was thus first robbed of her good name and then 
of her life. 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 157 

It is a short walk onward to the Piazza della Signoria. 
But it would be a long story to tell you of the half that is 
in it and around it — more of art glory than illustrates any 
other square in Europe. In the middle of it is an eques- 
trian statue of Cosimus I., the one to whom the historic 
column was presented, at whose base the poor girl was 
killed of whom we have just been speaking. John of Bo-' 
logna made this statue — a great work — and the grim man 
on the horse looks as if the story of him I am about to 
tell might be true. He had two sons, one of them just 
of age, the other a year or two younger. The two 
young men were out together hunting, and the older one 
was killed. When the younger returned with the dead 
body of his brother, too well did the stern father read in 
the eye and voice of the ambitious boy that his brother's 
blood was on his soul. Down into the deep recesses of 
the palace dungeons the father led his son — now his only 
son; and there, with a candle in one hand and a knife in 
the other, charged him with the crime ; and while the 
guilty boy knelt before him, and begged for mercy with 
screams that might have made the huge walls melt with 
pity even for a fratricide, the proud duke plunged the 
knife into his heart, and went up childless to his bed. 

It would not be strange if some of these tales and many 
more were done in smooth verse in Rogers's " Italy." If. 
so, you may be sure that there is history as well as poetry 
to verify the stories. For he, unlike other poets, gives his 
authorities and deals only with facts. With one exception. 
He makes a note at the bottom, and confesses to this in- 
vention — the old story of Ginevra, the bride of the mistle- 
toe-bough. Rogers lays the scene of it in one of the 
streets through which he passes on that journey which, in 
the manner of Horace, he has put into pleasant verse. 



158 UNDER THE TREES. 

He describes the house where the picture of Ginevra may 
be seen, and then with words of tenderness he tells the 
story of her love and bridal — how she playfully ran from 
the wedding banquet and bade her new spouse follow her : 
he pursues and loses track of her as she flies up the stairs 
and through the chambers, and search for her is all in 
vain ; and night and day, and weeks and years wear away, 
and no bride appears ; and when at last the " old oak 
chest " in a garret is removed, the jeweled skeleton falls 
out, and Ginevra is found. The story is told of a house 
in England, probably of half a dozen ; it is just as true of 
several in Germany; but Rogers puts it into his poem of 
"Italy;" and although he adds a note that indorses it as 
pure fiction, so credulous is the world that they have found 
the house he describes in the locality he indicates, and 
the rush of travelers to see the hypothetical picture has 
become so great that the persecuted proprietor, for the 
sake of getting quiet enjoyment of his humble home, has 
been compelled to put up a " notice " on his gate that no 
such picture is there, and never was. But this only makes 
the matter worse. His notice is regarded as a mere ex- 
cuse for not opening his doors to anxious strangers, and it 
may be that he will have to burn his house down and 
build another elsewhere, or get a picture of some ideal 
bride and hang it on his outer wall, that people may be- 
hold and go on their way content. 

Until we had been to the two great galleries, it was not 
possible to feel that we had actually come again to Flor- 
ence. Every moment there was the present consciousness 
that within a few steps was the perfection of human art 
and genius, shedding its beauty continually, but not for 
us, and time was more and more precious as it passed, 
and these glories of the old masters were yet unseen. 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 1 59 

In the possession of statues and paintings Florence is 
richer than any other city in the world. Critics may dis- 
pute this remark, but the fact will remain. And when 
Paris and Berlin, and Munich and Dresden, and Rome 
and even Madrid have been exhausted, the lover of the 
beautiful will delight himself here as he has not elsewhere, 
and then will carry away impressions to abide among the 
brightest and sweetest that linger in the evening of his 
life. 

In the midst of the Uffizi Gallery stands the statue that 
not only " enchants the world," but is the model of beauty 
in the studios of painters and sculptors. To see it is an 
essential part of a liberal education. It is surrounded by 
other works of art scarcely less worthy of study, and 
thither tend the feet of the pilgrim as he enters this tem- 
ple, as if there were the high altar for his first worship. 
The portico of the temple is adorned with twenty-eight 
statues, but these are passed without notice, as the trav- 
eler hastens to ascend the stone staircase, and enters at 
once the halls that were founded by the Medicis three 
hundred years ago. This proud and powerful family, 
whose virtues and vices are alike illustrious in the annals 
of Italy, and whose name will be immortal in art, have 
their statues in the vestibule among those of Mars and 
Silenus, Bacchus and Hecate. But these effigies of the 
real and ideal do not detain us. Nor can we stop in the 
second vestibule, and study a horse in marble, so instinct 
with life as to suggest the idea of danger in his presence, 
as also in that of the famous marble boar, on the other 
side. Enter the first corridor: Pompey, Julius Ceesar, and 
Augustus, Julia and Tiberius, are here in marble, while the 
warmer painting introduces you to the earlier stages of the 
art, and thus prepares you to appreciate and enjoy the 



l6o UNDER THE TREES. 

luxuries of the higher developments beyond. Cimabue 
and his shepherd-boy pupil, Giotto, are represented here 
in their works. They are all of the sacred school : the 
Virgin and Child, chiefly, with a picture of a soul flying 
into the arms of the Saviour. Twelve angels of rare love- 
liness surround the Virgin Mother and her Son, the Wise 
Men are adoring the infant Jesus, and the next picture 
introduces us to the Nuptials of Perseus, disturbed by 
Phineas. Is it from want of religious sentiment that we 
soon weary of these endless repetitions of sacred scenes, 
and find relief in a picture or a statue that by contrast 
is called profane ? We are in haste to get on, and St. 
Francis and St. Lawrence, nor even the Birth of Venus, 
nor Moses defending the Daughters of Jethro, nor the 
Creation of Adam, the Rape of Ganymede, the New 
Spouse, the statue of a Nymph extracting a thorn from her 
foot, nor a thousand more must demand of us more than 
a passing glance, for there is something that calls us on- 
ward, and we can not pause by the way, even to dwell for 
a moment on these works, which alone would be the ad- 
miration of mankind. 

It will check our ardor for an instant to read the notice 
of the chamber into which we are about to enter. The 
author of the catalogue has essayed, in English, to inform 
the reader what he is expected to feel as he beholds the 
mysteries of this place. He says : 

^^ Tribune. — This pretty octagon saloon, known under this name, 
is one of the rarest wonders of the art, one of those sanctuaries 
which can not be looked upon without being amazed by a respectful 
and moving sentiment." 

Entering this sacred chamber, whose atmosphere is 
loaded with beauty, and whose every work is one of the 
masterpieces of masters to whom all other masters are 



MEMORIES OF ITALY, l6l 

proud to do homage, one is instantly struck with the un- 
desirable change that has come over the face of things 
here since the Grand-Duke was compelled to quit these 
walls. In those severer days these wide and splendid 
apartments were hallowed by and to art. Silence and 
study and admiration and worship filled them. One took 
off his hat instinctively when he came into the Tribune, 
and though many guests were there from many lands, 
none spoke except in whispers, and it seemed a desecra- 
tion of the place to be gay or rude. But now the free 
and easy bear rule. Soldiers lounge and laugh loudly 
behind and before the statues. Copyists fling their jokes 
across the chamber to each other, and it was hard to be 
content with the fact that, with the boon of greater liberty, 
the people were evidently losing their appreciation of the 
beautiful and reverence for the glorious in works of art. 
But the truth, sad as it is, meets the eye and the ear, on 
the street and in the gallery, wherever men mingle, and 
we must reserve the philosophy of it till we get out of 
this radiant chamber, where we can converse more calm- 
ly than here. 

For we are now in the presence of the loftiest concep- 
tions of what mankind for three centuries at least have 
been agreed in regarding the most worthy of admiration 
in the picture and the marble. An inscription on the 
base of the statue of the Venus de Medici ascribes the 
work to Cleomene, the son of Apollodorus, the Athenian 
sculptor, and there is no doubt that the Greeks conceived 
and produced it. But it was found in the ruins of Hadri- 
an's villa at Tivoli, near Rome, and brought to Florence 
when Cosimus III. was lord of the city. Rich as Flor- 
ence is in marbles, the most of its ancient treasures 
came from Rome ; and the wealth and power of the 

L 



1 62 UNDER THE TREES. 

Medicis made this their city rich at the expense of its 
greater rival. To those who have a higher idea of the 
loveliness that lies in the soul, and laughs in the eye, and 
finds expression in the voice when words come up from a 
fond heart and out from a cultivated mind, than the an- 
cient Greeks or Romans had, or than any Oriental race 
now has, this statue would be more beautiful if it had 
no head. It may have been designed by its sculptor for 
a Venus, but it has not intellect enough, nor room for 
intellect enough to make a respectable woman of any 
kind, not to speak of a goddess, who should be at least 
equal if not vastly superior to the divinities of the human 
race of ladies. Yet this was and is the ruling sentiment 
of the ancient Greek mind and the Roman, and perhaps 
of every race, however cultured, without the revelation 
of that religion which brought to light the true glory and 
power of woman. We then study the statue simply as 
the marbleized idea of a physically beautiful female form : 
not of a Venus, not a goddess of beauty, not a portrait or 
copy from a model, but the production of one's idea of 
what perfection would be if it were put into flesh or stone. 
And here the consent of the centuries must be taken in 
evidence, and there is no use in writing. an argument to 
show that they have all been mistaken. There it stands. 
And if you had stumbled upon it in the ruins of Karnak 
or Persepolis, you would have been entranced. To see 
such a work and be unmoved is to be more or less than 
a man. The beauty that covers it as with a garment, for 
it has no other covering, is so radiant from every limb 
that he would be very foolish who should try to say 
wherein its chief excellence lies as a work of art. Per- 
haps the exquisite proportions of the form and limbs are 
such as to prevent the attention from being fastened on 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 163 

any single feature as more perfect than another. It is 
harmonious. It sings melodiously in its silent loveliness, 
ravishing the eye year after year, age after age, without a 
rival or a peer. Why can not others, standing on the 
height to which this statue beckons and lifts them, think 
out and carve something higher and better. They have 
done it in the intellectual and moral application of art to 
marble; but they have no forms more perfect than this, no 
lines more graceful, no limbs so fitly tapered, proportioned, 
and harmonized that the spectator is lost in mingled won- 
der and delight as the marble floats in the air, cheating 
his senses into the half delusion that a thing of life is 
there before him. It is not a modest statue. The 
pose of it is the attitude of one who is " naked and not 
ashamed," because innocent like Eve and ignorant of 
evil. And the whole question of the moral influence of 
undraped statues would come under discussion if we were 
now speaking of this from any other than the stand-point 
of art, to judge of it only as the lithograph of some great 
master's dream of beauty. 

Day after day it is a joy to come into this chamber, 
take an arm-chair, removed from contact with others, and 
give one's self up to the gentle flow of soul that moves on 
with the harmony of these fine creations. They are the 
works of man, but what work of God is greater than the 
mind capable of conceiving such things as these ? And 
if God taught the fingers of David to fight, and gave his 
right hand cunning to play on stringed instruments, how 
much more of the infinite wisdom and skill was imparted 
to him who composed and achieved these marble por- 
traits of ideal loveliness. It is worship to look through 
nature up to God, and higher and profounder worship 
still to see the hand of him who painted the rainbow 



l64 UNDER THE TREES. 

and the rose, and set the stars in constellations of beau- 
ty, revealed in the works of instruments he made to pro- 
duce these grand results. Art is therefore only nature in 
school: the fruit of the seed that Infinite Wisdom plant- 
ed, the up-growth of that divine and immortal nature of 
which man was made a partaker when he was born in 
the likeness of God. How it has been debased by sin ! 
Even here in these holy places the evidence is all about 
us. This Venus is an illustration. 

Near to her, in strong contrast, the Wrestlers show 
the development of muscular strength, and then the 
Dancing Faun, attributed to Praxiteles, and a boy Apollo, 
and above all an ancient statue of a man apparently 
sharpening a knife — a noble work to exhibit anatomy in 
stone. All these works have their separate and distinct- 
ly defined attractions, few more exciting than the volupt- 
uous and meretricious charms of the marble goddess who 
stands like a queen of beauty among them. And each 
one is a study on which criticism has been exhausted. 
From them all ideas have been drawn that are again pro- 
duced in the works of other artists, unconsciously for the 
most part, but as distinctly as the words or thoughts of 
one author sometimes find their way into the works of 
another, who has no recollection of their foreign origin. 
Thus the beautiful and the great are wisely and widely 
diffused. Passing from one gallery, or studio, or country 
to another, we meet in the modern production what is in 
part a reproduction of the ancient ; and so far from re- 
proaching the copyist as a plagiarist, which he is not con- 
sciously, we do well to be glad that his mind was large 
enough to receive, his taste capable of appreciating, and 
his hand cunning to render in oil or in clay the charm 
that delighted us in the work of the older worker. It is 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 1 65 

genius only that can imitate the perfect. A great actor 
is a great artist. The faults of others may be parodied 
by a clown ; but to interpret the thoughts of others in 
words, in gesture, on canvas, in bronze or marble, this is 
a labor not to be successfully achieved without at least a 
portion of that genius which originally wrestled in the 
creation. 

The paintings in this chamber are not less worthy of 
study than the statues. Some great artists pronounce 
Titian's Venus the best coloring in the world. Many ad- 
mire it as the most perfect painting of the human figure, 
as the statue before it is the most perfect copy in marble. 
Here, too, are the best pictures, or, if not the best, some 
of the most celebrated works of Domenichino, Andrea 
del Sarto, Guercino, Van Dyck, Raphael, Perugino, Fra 
Bartolomeo, Correggio, Rubens, Giulio Romano, and one 
by Michael Angelo. Each painting is a masterpiece. 
Most of them, yet not all, are sacred themes. Raphael's 
Fornarina certainly is not a very sacred subject. But 
besides this portrait of a frail beauty, whom he loved, 
there is also his "Virgin of the Goldfinch," as it is called, 
a painting scarcely less admired than those other Madon- 
nas of his which have been copied and recopied until it 
would seem that the world itself would not contain them. 

Reluctantly leaving this charmed spot, we wander from 
room to room, through all the various schools of painting, 
thus readily catching the peculiarities of each, as we 
would not if they were hung promiscuously. The Tuscan 
easily holds the pre-eminence. It was a wonderful out- 
burst of nature, or rather a remarkable gift of Heaven, 
that bestowed the five greatest painters that ever lived 
upon this little city of Florence within the same short 
period of twenty-five years. And here they shine from 



l66 UNDER THE TREES. 

these walls, living in their works — dead, but speaking. In 
the hall of portraits we have the likeness of all the great 
masters of all countries, most of them painted by their 
own hands; and thus a double interest is imparted to the 
pictures. Thus they looked. And thus they drew their 
own ideas of themselves. Wonderful men ! Is the race 
extinct forever ? 

It certainly is not, because in some lines of art we have 
men now who surpass these who are honored as the old 
masters. There are no painted landscapes in Italy supe- 
rior, none equal to the glorious works of our quite modern 
American school. There are no paintings of animals 
more true to nature than Rosa Bonheur's, and she is not 
an "old master." But when we come to that higher re- 
gion of- thought, and of power to paint it, such as the 
" Descent from the Cross " required in Rubens, and the 
" Transfiguration " demanded of Raphael — who died while 
the canvas was yet under his young but mighty hand — or 
as the "Communion of Jerome" reveals in Domenichino, 
and at least a thousand others exacted of their authors, 
whose works — on the walls, in fresco, or on panels or can- 
vas — remain for the imitation of the coming generations 
of disciples, who will be lifted up by their contemplation, 
then we are constrained to confess that these men of the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries still remain without 
rivals in these realms of art. 

After we have spent a few days in the various halls of 
this Uffizi Gallery, the names and numbers of the apart- 
ments being more than can be mentioned here, you will 
walk with us by a new yet very ancient path to another 
gallery of richer beauty. It is a new, but very ancient 
way. On the other side of the River Arno, which divides 
the city of Florence, stands the Pitti Palace, for several 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 167 

hundred years the residence of the Grand -Dukes of 
Tuscany, and afterward the palace of the King of Italy. 
Between this Pitti Palace and the old palace a secret 
gallery was built some three hundred years ago, extend- 
ing along the tops of houses, across streets, and, following 
the Ponte Vecchio over the river, making a promenade 
of nearly one thousand feet in length, and about twelve 
feet wide. This long passage has been exclusively re- 
served for royal footsteps. In these passing centuries 
the Florentines and strangers have known that such a 
passage joined the distant palaces, but none knew what 
treasures of art were there enshrined, nor what mysteri- 
ous pleasures would be revealed if the tide of ordinary 
humanity were allowed to ebb and flow along its silent 
pavement. In course of time, when Victor Emanuel came 
into quiet possession of the seats of the grand-duke, he 
threw open this long and long-closed gallery to the pub- 
lic ; and now a stream of life flows through it daily. For 
it is rich in stores the existence of which was quite un- 
known to the common world. Its walls are hung with 
Gobelin and other tapestries of surpassing excellence of 
workmanship, more admired by many than the most ex- 
quisite paintings. Tables and shelves are loaded with 
gems of precious stones, mosaics, cameos, and curious 
coins, and thousands of interesting and rare productions 
from ancient museums and former civilizations in this 
and other lands. And perhaps more to be prized than 
all else in this unique collection is an almost endless 
number of simple sheets of paper, on which are the first 
sketches of the great works of those mighty sons of gen- 
ius whose labors we have just been beholding, and of 
others whose fame has filled the earth. These are auto- 
graphs that thrill one as he thinks that Michael Angelo 



1 68 UNDER THE TREES. 

put with his own hand, and perhaps his old hand, these 
lines on this sheet; drew with bold yet cautious strokes 
this rude outline of a group which grew in his mind and 
underneath his touch till it blazed into a painting that 
now, when his hand has been dust for three hundred 
years, is still one of the joys of an admiring and appre- 
ciative age. And there is scarcely a man whose fame is 
world-wide as a painter or a sculptor of the last four or 
five centuries whose infant works are not preserved under 
glass in this royal mausoleum of genius. 

Midway of the bridge the windows of this hanging gal- 
lery are enlarged, and a saloon is furnished with seats, 
where a wearied guest may sit and muse among the 
present and the past. The Arno flows beneath him. Its 
swollen waters, confined within walls, rush below the bal- 
conies of old palaces, each one of which has a history full 
of romantic interest. On either hand the fairest works 
of art are lying, inviting him to be wise and happy in the 
good and the beautiful. 

The story of this Pitti Palace is familiar. The head 
of the family that built it, in 1440, wished to eclipse the 
splendor of the reigning house, and boasted that he would 
rear a palace in whose court the house of the Medici 
might stand. He did. But by one of those little ups 
and downs in life that are quite as common in old coun- 
tries as new, it came to pass that the Pitti family went 
under, and the Medici, instead of putting their palace 
into the court of the Pitti, put themselves into the Pitti 
Palace ; and it has remained the royal residence down to 
this day. And when the grand-duke went out in haste, 
leaving his effects behind him, Victor Emanuel came in 
and took possession. These royal gentlemen in Europe 
are wide-awake to the ticklish tenure by which they hold 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 169 

their palaces and power; and it is their practice to make 
to themselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, 
by hiding away, in other countries than their own, nice 
stores of gold and silver, which are very useful when they 
find it necessary to be up and moving to foreign parts. 
Thus the ex-King of Naples, without a crown, has more 
crowns at the bankers, it is said, than almost any other 
man in Europe ; and he lives right royally at Rome, or 
any where else that it pleases him, except at home. The 
former Grand-Duke of Tuscany is a private gentleman in 
a beautiful villa in Austria ; and in one of his establish- 
ments in Florence there are ninety elegant carriages be- 
longing to him, which he is at liberty to send for and 
take away. 

On the upper floor of this palace, and extending the 
whole length of it, is a gallery of pictures. Beneath are 
the royal apartments. The stone staircases leading up are 
detached entirely from the household entrance, and the 
stone floors of the long corridors of paintings are imper- 
vious to the sound of footsteps, so that the gallery, open 
daily to the public, is as secluded from the residence of 
the king as if it were in another part of the city. It in- 
cludes about five hundred pictures ; but the number, 
though smaller than that of the Uffizi, embraces more 
works of transcendent merit, and, as a whole, is vastly 
superior. The ceiling of the saloon where we begin to 
study the pictures in order has a moral that one may 
well learn, even from heathen mythology : it is a lesson 
the young are slow to take ; but they never come to much 
of any thing in this world till they do learn it, and for the 
want of it thousands go astray. The painting is by Pietro 
da Cartona, and represents Minerva taking a young man 
from Venus and conducting him to Hercules. There is 



lyo UNDER THE TREES. 

no need of pausing here to preach a Christian sermon 
from this Pagan text. There are several texts in the 
Proverbs of Solomon teaching the same idea. Minerva 
is the goddess of wisdom, Venus of sensual love, and 
Hercules the god of strength, energy, power. Wisdom 
takes a young man away from sensual indulgence, and 
inspires him with force to do and conquer in the battle 
of life. And it is just this that makes the difference in 
the success of men. 

All the great painters of the last four hundred years 
are now near us in some of their finest compositions. 
The freshness of the coloring, too, often tells us that rash 
hands have been permitted to retouch some of these mas- 
terpieces. " Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." 
It is even easier now than ever for an ambitious young 
artist to get an order from the authorities to take down 
one of these pictures and restore (!) it. It is also much 
less difficult than formerly to get permission to remove 
a painting from its place to make a copy of it. In this 
process the original often suffers injury. And the thought 
that a profane hand has touched one of the works of these 
men of old is painful. They ought to be above suspicion. 

Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola, in this gallery, has 
been more frequently copied and recopied by every proc- 
ess of art known to men than any other picture in the 
known world. From the breastpin of a maid to the 
glorious tableau that adorns the hall, the pencil and 
brush and sun have multiplied it, until there are few who 
a^'e not familiar with the young woman's face as she sits 
in a chair with the babe nestling on her shoulder. And 
that is about all you can make of it. It is not the Mary 
who gave the infant Jesus to the world, and one looking 
at it would not suppose that she thought so herself. The 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 171 

same may be said of the same great artist's Madonna of 
the Balcony, and also of the Goldfinch. If the old mas- 
ters failed ever, they all failed in that which more fre- 
quently than any thing else employed their powers — the 
production of a just idea of the Mother of our Lord. Yet 
they were not unmindful of the obvious truth that the one 
grand idea to be embodied and made visible in the coun- 
tenance of the Virgin Mother is this — the consciousness 
of the fact that she herself was mysteriously the mother 
of Immanuel. Others might believe it ; her own husband 
might, because he had been told so in a dream, and his 
Mary, whom he loved, had often whispered in his amazed 
and trembling soul the awful secret that " that which was 
cpnceived in her was of the Holy Ghost." But she only, 
of all the world, kneiv it was so. Jewish maidens and 
mothers longed and prayed that it might be so with them. 
But now it was hers. The angel of the Annunciation had 
brought her the joyful tidings of its coming. The Mes- 
siah, of God begotten, had leaped in her womb. He was 
born of her and laid in a manger. The sages of the East 
had worshiped him with gifts of incense and gold, as he 
lay by the side of his spotless mother. What to her, in 
the hope and glory of that triumphant hour, was the 
world's opinion of her or this wondrous child ? He lived 
and grew, and her mother heart swelled daily with the 
knowledge of the future redemption to be wrought for Is- 
rael through her fair boy. All this and more were in the 
soul of Mary as she hugged the child Jesus to her bound- 
ing breast. Could not a great artist put somewhat of it 
in her radiant face ? These old masters do not appear to 
have made the attempt. To attempt was with them to 
succeed, and thus we know they did not try. Their Ma- 
donnas, for the most part, are only nice young women ; 



172 UNDER THE TREES. 

but never could have been in the royal line, like her who 
was called to be the Mother of the Son of God. If there 
is one exception, it is to be found in the gallery we are 
now visiting. 

When I was first in Florence, a friend informed me that 
the grand-duke had in his private apartments, and hang- 
ing by the side of his bed, a Madonna by "Raphael, pro- 
nounced by all who had seen it to be the most perfect 
realization of the idea, and that no other would compare 
with it favorably. We obtained permission to visit the 
chamber, and the result more than answered my expecta- 
tions. It has not all that belongs to the Virgin Mother ; 
but it has more than any other in the world. So highly 
was the painting valued by the grand-duke that he had 
it with him in his carriage when he traveled, and it rested 
near him wherever he slept. Its history is remarkable. 
In this city of Florence, some years ago, one of the old 
and decayed families, whose only treasure left was an in- 
herited picture, unable to pay their rent, which was only 
forty dollars, offered to the landlord this painting for the 
debt. As it was all he could get, he took it. The new 
possessor showed it to the father of the last grand-duke, 
who was then in power. He appreciated it, and insisted 
on retaining it, giving the owner six hundred dollars, which 
he probably regarded as a high price. It is now beyond 
value in gold, for the richest king could not buy it. The 
grand-duke left it in his flight, and has sent for it as part 
of his private property ; but the present government 
chooses to regard it as belonging to the public collections 
of art, the property of the crown, and so retains it. It is 
the crown of the gallery now. So recently has it been in 
the reach of the public that few copies have been made 
of it. But daily groups of silent spectators pause before 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 1 73 

it, arrested by the solemn thoughtfulness, the calm con- 
scious dignity, the majestic womanly beauty of the blessed 
Mother with her divine child. 

You would be surprised on coming for the first time to 
these and other collections in Europe to see how large a 
part of the labor and genius of the great painters of three 
and four hundred years ago was expended upon pictures 
of the Holy Family, and more than all others on the Vir- 
gin Mother herself. The sentiment of the age may be 
traced in the art of the age. The world owes more to 
the Church of Rome for the works of art which her sen- 
timent has produced and preserved than for aught else 
she has done for mankind. Protestantism never protested 
against art ; but its higher spiritualities rejected the visi- 
ble and material, and holds communion directly with the 
unseen and eternal. The doctrine of justification by faith 
only, drawing the soul to the ascended Saviour, and unit- 
ing it to him in a communion that admits no intercessor 
or mediator, left no place for the images or pictures of 
saints or virgins, or even of the human body of the once 
crucified but now glorified Redeemer. It is not impor- 
tant that we regard the making of these likenesses a 
breach of the second command, in order to understand 
the reason of their absence from the Protestant idea of 
worship. They are an element indispensable to the Ro- 
man Catholic system, because from the early departure 
of that Church from the simplicity of the Gospel it sought 
and taught salvation through the intervention of saints, 
and the great intercessor between man and the Saviour 
was held to be his Virgin Mother. The intelligent 
teachers of this Church tell us, and we will not question 
their candor when they say they do not worship the pict- 
ure or the graven image of the saint or the Madonna. 



174 UNDER THE TREES. 

But they use them as aids to devotion. In them they see 
what they must otherwise conceive, and the feeble mind 
of the multitude is incapable of reaching, in the pure ideal, 
such conceptions of the holiness, tenderness, love, and 
power of these intercessory agents as the genius of a great 
artist portrays in oil or in stone, and leaves for the use of 
the Church, or for the edification of the private, perhaps 
secluded Christian in after-ages. This was the sentiment 
that gave birth to these great works of art. Some of them 
were painted expressly to be placed over the high altar 
in magnificent churches. When the artistic taste or the 
pride of possession has inspired an emperor or a pope 
with the desire to add one of these glorious pictures, like 
the " Communion of Jerome," to his palatial gallery, the 
individual altar which it was designed to hallow with its 
mysterious power has been despoiled ; but in place of the 
picture an annual revenue of gold has been secured to the 
Church, Running on in the line of this thought, further 
than we have time to pursue it, we see that the Roman 
Catholic idea of the way of life was the inspiration of art 
in those years that gave to the human race such hands 
as those of Michael Angelo, Titian, and Raphael. 

So many times, as we pass from hall to hall, do we see 
the story of the Cross on these walls, that we will not stop 
to speak of any one of them as more worthy of study than 
the others. They who need it, or they who love it, may 
find employment or profit in the contemplation of the 
blessed Saviour's agony. Here they may come and learn 
what art has done to paint the Man of Sorrows in every 
stage of his existence in the world he came to redeem. 
The darkness of the stable his little body illuminates. 
Tn the Temple he stands, self-poised, and teaches the doc- 
tors with words of wisdom wondrous from a child. Ev- 



MEMORIES OF ITALY. 1 75 

ery miracle he wrought, every scene that he passed 
through, is here. He sweats as it were great drops of 
blood in Gethsemane. He is betrayed by a traitor's kiss. 
He stands before Pilate's bar. His bare back is cut with 
the sharp blows of the scourge. He sinks beneath the 
weight of the heavy cross — ah, how much heavier than 
any of ours, poor, sinful followers afar of that divine, ma- 
jestic, glorious sufferer, going of his own free will to the 
Mount of Martyrdom. And then the crucifixion ! Again, 
and again, and again, till the very repetition tires, is this 
scene of all scenes with every form and feature of mortal 
agony drawn. Each one of the old masters has exhausted 
his art upon some of these passages in the life and death 
of the Lord of life and death. And not less often is the 
tenderest of all the stories told: how they come with 
pious, woman love, and gently — as if the dead, yet still di- 
vine, might suffer — take him down from the cross. How 
lovingly does the Mother Mary hold his sacred feet, as if 
she would receive them in her bosom, and warm them 
back to life ! Here on another canvas they are laying 
him in the tomb. There the guards are flying while the 
God is coming forth from the burst sepulchre. And now 
a conscious Saviour reveals himself in that one word, 
" Mary," and she beholds her Lord. The walk to Em- 
maus is here. And why need we tell of the numberless 
scenes on the Hill of Ascension — the stricken disciples, 
the glorified, rising Redeemer, the clouds, the heavens 
opening, the work of redemption finished. 

Some of these scenes it is well to study even in pict- 
ures. Yel; there are few devout minds unable to form 
an ideal of the Saviour and his passion more edifying 
than art can put in colors. And it is not a part of our 
holy and happy religion to be made holier and happier 



176 UNDER THE TREES. 

by the study of the physical sufferings of oui- blessed Sav- 
iour. It does not make one love him more nor love 
him less to see his sacred head bleeding under the crown 
of thorns. But we may for the time separate ourselves 
from the relation in which we stand to the original of 
these Oriental scenes, and study them merely as works of 
high art, and then their true excellence will appear. We 
are too wise and too orthodox to use or to need them as 
aids to holy living. Perhaps we are too irreverent to re- 
gard them with the sacredness of contemplation which 
their subjects demand. But, in any aspect of the question 
they awaken, they are the great boons of Romanism to 
mankind ; and as such, as well as for the moral and intel- 
lectual power that is in them to instruct, exalt, and inspire 
humanity, they will be prized even by those whose relig- 
ious system rejects them from among its means of grace. 
The whole Scripture history may be found illustrated, 
Old and JSTew Testament alike. From the creation of 
Adam, and the rising from his side of Eve, to the opening 
of the seals of prophecy, every thing has been seized upon 
as a theme for the painter's skill. Titian's Mary Magda- 
len is here, whose golden tresses fall in luxuriant waves 
around her, and Mazzolini's adulterous woman, and every 
bloody scene that rises into the dignity of history and 
justifies the expense of time and paint. Judith holding 
by the hair the bleeding head of her slain enemy is often 
copied, and groups of people are always taking delight 
in its study. Classic history is ransacked for subjects. 
Heathen mythology, Roman and Grecian poetry and 
prose yield rich material for the artist's toil ; and he who 
masters the story and the picture will go away with a 
cultured intellect, and stores of beauty to admire in the 
retrospect, so long as memory performs her office. 



XVIII. 

A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE ALPS. 

I WAS on the great road that leads over the Alps into 
Italy by the famous Pass of St. Gothard. A party of 
students, seven from Germany and two from Oxford, join- 
ed us, and we resolved to hire a carriage to Amsteg, two 
hours onward, and there to begin the ascent and the pe- 
destrianism together. When we were set down at that 
village, with a walk of five hours before us, and all the 
way up the mountains, I confess to a slight sinking at 
the heart, and my courage oozed out gradually at the 
end of my toes. At the inn of Altorf, one of these Ger- 
man students attracted me by the gracefulness of his 
manner, the delicacy of his features, and the pleasant ex- 
pression with which he conversed. He attached himself 
to our party, and We walked on together, pilgrims as we 
were, bound to see Switzerland, and rejoicing in the pow- 
er to take leave of all modes of traveling but that first 
and best which nature had provided. 

The River Reuss comes dashing along down with the 
fury of a young torrent, pouring over rocks and whirling 
around precipices with a madness that brooks no control. 
The Bristenstock mountain towers aloft into the regions of 
snow and ice, and nature begins to grow wild and dreary. 
The soft meadows on which the maids of Uri were mak- 
ing hay have disappeared, and the green pastures with 
frequent herds are now the only hope of the shepherd. 

M 



178 UNDER THE TREES. 

The road is no longer a straight path, but in its toilsome 
way upward it crosses again and again this foaming river, 
and bridges of solid masonry, built to resist the flood 
when it bears the ruins of avalanches on its bosom, and 
spreads them in the spring on the plains below. 

We crossed the third bridge and came to a gorge of 
frightful depth, through which the river rages furiously in 
a maddened torrent too fearful to look upon without awe. 
It is called Pfafifen sprung, or the Priest's Leap, from a 
story which no one will believe who stands here, that a 
monk once leaped across the chasm with a maiden in his 
arms. I have no doubt a monk would do his best under 
the circumstances, but I doubt the possibility of his clear- 
ing thirty feet at a bound over such an abyss as this, even 
for the sake of the prize he is said to have carried off. 
We had been beset by beggars under all sorts of guises, 
and here a miserable old woman — alas, that a woman 
could come to this — appeared with a huge stone in her 
hands, which she hurled into the deeps, for us to see it 
leap from rock to rock and finally sink into the raging 
waters far below. A few cents she expected for this 
service, and she received them with gratitude ; when an 
old man, perhaps her husband, came on with another 
rock, which he was willing to drop for a similar consider- 
ation. As I turned away from the scene, a carriage came 
up in which an English gentleman was riding, with two 
servants on the box. I walked by the side of his car- 
riage and fell into conversation, wheh he invited me to 
ride with him. I found myself with a member of the 
I^ondon bar. He knew public men whom I had met, 
and was well acquainted with all subjects of international 
interest, so that in fifteen minutes we were comparing 
minds on those questions in which England and Amer- 



A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE ALPS. 1 79 

ica are so much concerned. We stopped at the Httle 
village of Wasen for refreshments. I insisted on paying 
the reckoning, when he stopped me with this remark: 
" Sir, you are my guest to-day ; when I meet you in 
America, I shall be happy to be yours." 

We rode on and upward, the road now assuming the 
character of a mighty structure of mason-work, through a 
savage defile, only wide enough for the carriage-path, and 
for the torrent of the Reuss, which no longer flows, but tum- 
bles headlong from one cliff to another, while for three or 
four miles the lofty precipices hang fearfully on high. In 
the spring, the rage of this mowntain river, swollen by 
melting snows, and bringing down ice and rocks in its 
thundering fall, would tear away the foundations of any 
common pathway, and this must be built to defy the fury 
of the fiercest storm. It is scarcely to be credited that 
twenty-five or thirty thousand persons cross the Alps by 
this route every year ; and to secure this travel, which 
would otherwise be carried off to the other passes, the 
cantons of Uri and Tessin built a road here which has 
twice been swept away by the avalanches ; but one would 
think that the present might stand while the mountains 
stand. So rapid is the ascent that the road is made often 
to double on itself, so that we are going directly backward 
on the route ; a foot-passenger may clamber across the 
doublets and save his time, but the carriage must keep the 
zigzag way, patiently toiling up a smoother and more beau- 
tiful highway than can be found in the most level region 
of the United States of America. Not a pebble in the 
path : the wheels meet no other obstruction than gravita- 
tion, which is sufficient to be overcome only by the strong- 
est of horse -power. Yet through this very defile, long 
before any road like this had been built, three armies — 



l8o UNDER THE TREES. 

the French and the Russians and the Austrians — have 
pursued each other, contesting every inch of this ground, 
and each one of these rugged heights, and disputing the 
possession of dizzy cliffs where the hunter was afraid to 
tread. Never did the feeling of nature's awful wildness 
so take possession of my soul as when night was shutting 
in upon me in this dreary pass. Sometimes the road is 
hewn out of the solid rock in the side of the precipice, 
which hangs over it as a roof, and again it is borne over 
the roaring stream, which in a gulf four hundred feet be- 
low is boiling in its obstructed course, and, making for it- 
self an opening, it leap* away over the rocks, and rushes 
down while we are toiling up. In the daytime it would 
be gloomy here ; it will be terrible indeed if the darkness 
overtakes us before we reach our resting-place for the 
night. 

More than five hundred years ago an old abbot of Ein- 
siedeln built a bridge over an awful chasm here, but such 
is the fury of the descending stream, the horrid rugged- 
ness of the surrounding scenery, the smoothness and so- 
lidity of the impending rocks, the roar and rage of the 
waters as they are tossed about and beaten into spray, 
and so unlikely does it appear that human power could 
ever have reared a bridge over such a cataract, that it has 
been called from time immemorial the Devil's Bridge, 
and so it will be called probably till the end of time. It 
was just nightfall when we reached it. It was very cold, 
so far up had we ascended, and my English friend and I 
had left the carriage and were walking to quicken the 
blood, when the roar of the waters rose suddenly upon 
us, the spray swept over us, and we were in the midst of 
a scene of such awful grandeur, and with terror mingled, 
as might well make the nerves of a strong man tremble. 



A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE ALPS. 151 

The River Reuss, at this stage of its course, makes a 
sweeping leap — a tremendous plunge at the very moment 
it bends nearly in a semicircle ; while the rocks, as if by 
some superhuman energy, have been hurled into the tor- 
rent's path, so as to break its force, but not to withstand 
its power. No words will describe the terrific rush of 
waters underneath the bridge which spans the dark abyss. 
Two bridges, indeed, are here ; for when the old road was 
swept away, the bridge defied the storm, and now this, 
more solid and of far greater span, has been thrown high 
above the other, which is left as an architectural curiosity 
in the depths below. And long before that was built an- 
other one was there j and when the French in 1 799 pur- 
sued the Austrians over it, and while the embattled hosts 
were making hell in a furious fight upon and over this 
frightful gorge, the bridge was blown up, and the strug- 
gling foes were whelmed together in the devouring flood. 
A month afterward, and the Russians met the French at 
the same spot. No bridge was here, but the fierce Rus- 
sians bound timbers together with the scarfs of the officers, 
threw them over the chasm, crossed in the midst of a mur- 
derous fire, and drove the enemy down the pass into the 
vales below. 

It was dark before we were willing to quit this fearful 
place. The strength of the present bridge is so obvious, 
and the parapet so high, that the scene may be contem- 
plated without fear ; but the clouds had now gathered, 
hoarse thunder muttered among the mountains, spiteful 
squalls of rain — cold, gloomy, and piercing — were driving 
into our faces, and we were anxious to find shelter for 
the night. We left the bridge, but in another moment 
plunged into utter darkness as we entered a tunnel called 
the Hole of Uri, where the road is bored one hundred and 



152 UNDER THE TREES. 

eighty feet through the solid rock, a hard but the only 
passage, as the stream usurps the rest of the way, and the 
precipice admits no possible path over its lofty head. 
This was made one hundred and fifty years ago, and be- 
fore that time the passage was made on a shelf supported 
by chains let down from above. It was called the Gal- 
lery of Uri, and along it a single traveler could creep, if 
he had the nerve, in the midst of the roar and the spray 
of the torrent, and with a hungry gulf yawning wide be- 
low him. Emerging from this den, we entered a vale — 
yes, a valley five thousand feet above the sea: once 
doubtless a lake, whence the waters of the Reuss have 
burst the barriers of these giant fortresses, and found 
their way into more hospitable climes. No corn grows 
here, but the land flows with milk and honey, by no means 
an indication of fertility, for the cows and the goats find 
pasture at the foot of the glaciers, and the bees their nests 
in the stunted trees and the holes of the rocks. We drove 
through it till we came to Andermatt, where the numer- 
ous lights in the windows guided us to a rustic tavern. 

By this time it had commenced raining hard, and I be- 
gan to be anxious for my young friends behind. But I 
could do no more for them than to send a man to watch 
on the highway till they should come up, and lead them 
into the house where I was resolved to spend the night, 
whether we could find beds or not. These rural inns in 
Switzerland are rude and often far from comfortable. 
But travelers must not stand upon trifles. The house 
was designed to lodge twenty travelers, and thirty at least 
were here before us. A large supper-table was spread, 
and around it a company of gentlemen and ladies, mostly 
Germans, were enjoying themselves right heartily after the 
day's fatigue was over. The London lawyer and myself 



A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE ALPS. 183 

had a separate table laid. We soon gathered on it some 
of the good things of this life, which you can find almost 
every where, and had made some progress in the discus- 
sion of the various subjects before us, when my traveling 
friend and Heinrich arrived, nearly exhausted with their 
toilsome walk. They had a dreadful tale to tell of the 
storm they had met, which we just escaped, and bare- 
ly that. The lightning filled the gloomy gorge, lighting 
up for an instant the mighty cliffs and hanging preci- 
pices, while the thunder roared above the sound of the 
torrent, and the rain drove into their faces, disputing with 
them the upward pass. But they were young men, and 
strong. They told me that I never could have borne the 
labor and the exposure of the walk. Two travelers and 
a guide had given out, and taken lodgings in a hamlet we 
had passed, and the man whom we had employed to bring 
on our light bags had also halted for the night, and would 
come up early in the morning. 

After supper the landlady led us up three pairs of stairs, 
under the very roof, into a low garret bedroom, with one 
window of boards which could be opened, and one small 
one of glass that could not, and with three beds. Worn 
out with their hard day's work, but free from all anxious 
care, my young friends were asleep in five minutes, while 
I coaxed the candle to burn as long as it would — fastened 
it up with a pin on the top of a candlestick — and tried to 
write the records of the few past hours. It was amusing 
to hear my companions, one on each side of me, talking 
in their sleep, Heinrich in his native German and the 
other in his English, showing the restlessness of over- 
fatigue, while I sat wondering that I, so lately a poor 
invalid, should now be in this wild region, exposed to 
such nights of discomfort and days of toil. 



184 UNDER THE TREES. 

In the morning I met an American gentleman return- 
ing from the summit of the St. Gothard Pass, and he ad- 
vised me strenuously not to go farther up, unless I were 
going into Italy. The most wonderful of the engineer- 
ing in the construction of the road I had already seen, 
and there was nothing else of interest above. The same 
savage scenery, in the midst of which the Reuss leaps 
down two thousand feet in the course of a two hours' 
walk, is continued, and the dreariness of desolation reigns 
alone. A house for the accommodation of travelers has 
been maintained for hundreds of years, destroyed at times 
and then restored ; and a few monks have been supported 
here to extend what aid they may to those who require 
their assistance. I resolved to piarsue my route through 
the Furca Pass, one of the most romantic and interesting 
of all the passes in Switzerland. A long day's walk it 
would be over frozen mountains and by the side of never- 
melting glaciers, and no carriage-way. Nothing but a 
bridle and foot path, and a rough one, too, was now before 
us ; and if we left the present road, and struck off over 
the Furca, it would be four or five days at least before 
we should reach the routes which are traversed by wheels. 
Our baggage, though but a bag apiece and blankets, was 
too heavy for us to carry if we walked, and I proposed 
to my companions that we hire a horse, put on him our 
three bundles, and take turns riding — or, more elegantly, 
ride by turns. Heinrich had never heard of the mode 
of traveling called "ride and tie," and he was greatly 
amused when I described it to him over a very comforta- 
ble cup of coffee. An idle group of guides and tavern- 
hangers were gaping around, and a party of Germans and 
English were looking on when I bestrode the horse, and 
took my seat in the midst of bundles rising before and 



A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE ALPS. 1 85 

behind, like the humps of a camel. Behold us now upon 
our winding way. We are yet in the vale of Urseren, 
not more than a mile wide, and lofty mountains flanking 
its sides. The mountain of St, Anna is clad with a gla- 
cier, from which the " thunderbolts of snow " come down 
with terrific power in the spring; and yet there stands a 
forest in the form of a triangle, pointing upward, and so 
placed that the slides of snow as they come down are 
broken in pieces and guided away from the village be- 
low. The great business of the people in this vale is to 
keep cattle and to fleece the strangers who travel in 
throngs over the Pass of St. Gothard. Hundreds of horses 
are kept for hire, and nothing is to be had by a " foreign- 
er " unless he pay an exorbitant price. Even the spec- 
imens of minerals are held so high that no reasonable 
man can afford to buy them. But we are now leaving 
Andermatt ; and on the side of the road not long after 
leaving the village w& saw two stone pillars, which need 
but a beam to be laid across them, and they make a gal- 
lows, on which criminals were formerly hung, when this 
little valley, like Gersau on the lake, was an independent 
state. The pillars are still preserved with care, as a me- 
morial of the former sovereignty of the community. We 
reached Hospenthal in a few moments : a cluster of 
houses about a church, and with a tower above the ham- 
let which is attributed to the Lombards. I was struck 
with the exceeding loneliness and forsakenness of this 
spot. It seemed that men had once been here, but had 
retired from so wild and barren a land to some more 
genial clime. Hospenthal has a hotel or two, and it is a 
great halting-place for travelers who are about to take 
our route over the Furca to the Hospfte of the Grimsel. 
Here we quit the St. Gothard road, and winding off by a 



1 86 UNDER THE TREES. 

narrow path in which we can go only in single file, we 
are soon out of the vale, and slowly making our way up 
the mountain. The hill -sides are dotted with the huts 
of the poor peasants, who have hard work to hold fast to 
the slopes with one hand while they work for a miserable 
living with the other. The morning sun was playing on 
the blue glacier of St. Anna, and a blue waterfall wander- 
ed and tumbled down the mountain ; yet this was but 
one of many of the same kind that we are constantly 
meeting as we go through these defiles of the high Alps. 
The vast masses of snow and ice on the summits are 
sending down^ streams through the summer, and these 
sometimes leap from rock to rock, and again they clear 
hundreds of feet at a single bound ; slender, like a long 
white scarf on the green hill, but very picturesque and 
beautiful. At the foot of this mountain are the remains 
of an awful avalanche, which buried a little hamlet here 
in a sudden grave, and a sad story of a maiden and a 
babe who perished was told me with much feeling by the 
guide as we passed over the spot. The peasant men and 
women were bringing down bundles of hay on their heads 
and shoulders from the scanty meadows which here and 
there in a warm bosom of the hills may be found ; and as 
they descended I recalled the story of Orpheus, at whose 
music the trees are said to have followed him, and I 
could readily understand that such a procession as I now 
saw on these mountains might be taken or mistaken for 
the marching of a young forest. We are still following 
up the River Reuss toward its source, and though it is 
narrower, it is often fiercer, and makes longer strides at 
a step than it did last evening. We cross it now and 
then on occasional stones or on rude logs ; but we have 
now come to a passage where the bridge was swept away 



A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE ALPS. 1 87 

last night by an avalanche of earth and ice, and well for 
us that it came in the night before we were here to be 
caught. An old man with a pick-axe in his hand had 
been working to repair the crossing, and had managed to 
get a few stones arranged so that foot-passengers could 
leap over, and the horses, after slight hesitation and care- 
ful sounding of the bottom, took to the torrent and waded 
safely over. I held my feet high enough to escape a 
wetting, but I heard a lady of another party complaining 
bitterly that the water was so deep or her foot so far 
down, I could not tell which; but it was evident 'that 
very much against her will she had been drawn through 
the river. 

At Realp, a little handful of houses, we found a small 
house of refreshment, where two Capuchin friars resided 
to minister to travelers; and this was the last sign of a 
human habitation we saw for some weary hours. We 
were now so far up in the world that the snow lay in 
banks by the side of the path, while flowers — bright, beau- 
tiful flowers — were blooming in the sun. It is difficult to 
reconcile this apparent contradiction in nature. The fact 
is not surprising here, where we see such vast accumula- 
tions of snow, and remember that a short summer does 
not suffice to melt it ; but it is strange to read of flowery 
banks within a few feet only of these heaps of snow. I 
counted flowers of seven distinct colors, and gathered 
them as souvenirs of this remarkable region. On the 
right the Galenstock Glacier now appears, and out of it 
vast towering rocks like the battlements of some old cas- 
tle shoot 10,900 feet into the air. It was a glorious sight. 
There was brightness, strength, majesty, beauty, but it was 
nothing compared with what we saw before the sun went 
down. We are now among the ice palaces of the earth. 



l88 UNDER THE TREES. 

We were just making the last sharp ascent before reach- 
ing the summit of the Furca, when I overtook a lady sit- 
ting disconsolately on the wayside. She cried out as 
soon as I came up, " Oh, sir, my guide is such a brute — 
the saddle turns under me, and I can not get him to fix 
it — my husband has gone on before me — I can not speak 
a word of German, and the dumb fool can not speak a 
word of English. What shall I do ?" " Madam," said I, 
"my guide shall arrange your saddle in an instant, and 
I will conduct you to the summit, where the rest of your 
party will doubtless wait." She overpowered me with 
her expressions of gratitude ; and while the man was put- 
ting her saddle-girths to rights we crossed a vast snow 
bank together, climbed the steep pitch, and in ten minutes 
reached the inn at the top of the Furca. Distant glaciers, 
snow-clad summits, ridges, and ranges, named and un- 
named, stood around me — a world without inhabitants, 
desolate, cold, and grand in its icy canopy and hoary 
robes of snow. 

The descent was too rapid and severe for riding, and 
giving the horse into the charge of the guide, we walked 
down, discoursing by the way of things rarely talked of in 
the Alps. My young German friend was a philosopher of 
the sentimental school, with all the enthusiasm of the 
French character joined to the mysticism of his own na- 
tion. He was well read in English literature and familiar 
with ancient and modern authors, so that we had sources 
unfailing to entertain us as we wandered on ; now sitting 
down to rest, and now bracing ourselves for a sharp walk 
over a rugged pass. I became intensely interested in 
him, though I had constant occasion to challenge his 
opimons, and especially to contrast his philosophy with 
the revealed wisdom of God. We had spoken of these 



A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE ALPS. 1 89 

things for an hour or more, when I asked him if he had 
ever read the " Pilgrim's Progress '" and when I found he 
had not, I told him the design of the allegory, and said, 
"We are pilgrims over these mountains, and have been 
cheering one another with pleasing discourse, as the trav- 
elers did on their way to the celestial city. They came 
at last in sight of its gates of pearl." 

" But what is that ?" 

We had suddenly turned the shoulder of a hill, and a 
glacier of such splendor and extent burst upon our view 
as if to fix us to the spot in silent but excited admiration. 
It was the first we had seen near us. Others had been 
lying away in the far heights, their surface smoothed by 
the distance, and their color a dull blue ; but now we 
•were at the foot of a mountain of ice. We could stand 
upon it, walk on its face, gaze on its form and features, 
wonder, admire, look above it and adore. This was the 
Glacier of the Rhone. That great river springs from tte 
bosom of this glacier with a strong bound, as if suddenly 
summoned into being, works its way through a mighty 
cavern of ice, and then winds along the base, till it 
emerges in a roaring, milky- white stream, and rushes 
down the valley toward the sea. This glacier has been 
called a "magnificent sea of ice." It is not so. That 
description conveys no intelligible idea of the stupendous 
scene. You have stood in front of the American Fall, 
not the Horse -shoe Fall, of Niagara. Extend that fall 
far up the rapids, gradually receding as it rises a thousand 
feet or more from where you stand to the crest ; at each 
side of it let a tall mountain rise as a giant framework on 
which the tableau is to rest ; then suddenly congeal this 
cataract, with its curling waves, its clouds of spray, its 
falling showers of jewelry ; point its brow with pinnacles 



190 UNDER THE TREES. 

of ice, and then let the bright sun pour on it his beams, 
giving the brilliancy, not of snow, but of polished ice to 
the vast hill-side before you, and you will then have but 
a faint conception of the grandeur of this glacier as I saw 
it that afternoon. 

Heinrich cited Burke's definition of the sublime, and 
said that all the elements of sublimity were here. I re- 
plied that it was impossible for me to have the sensation 
of fear, and scarcely of awe, in looking upon the scene be- 
fore us ; it rather had to me the image of the outer walls 
of heaven, as if there must be infinite glory within and 
beyond, when such majesty and beauty were without. 
And then these flowers skirting the borders of this frozen 
pile, and smiling as lovely as beneath the sunniest slope 
in Italy, forbade the idea that this crystal mountain was 
of ice. It must be an illusion of an hour; and if we re- 
turn to-morrow, will it not have disappeared ? 

No, not at all. These glaciers are the great reservoirs 
that feed all the springs and fill all the rivers of the con- 
tinent j they are placed away up there where they yield 
only to the heat of high summer, and send down their 
waters to, supply the fountains that otherwise would be 
dry ; and thus, in all their coldness and apparent useless- 
ness, they are among the greatest blessings of the human 
race. 

I must pass rapidly over the remainder of that day's 
journey : the game at snow-balling which we had on this 
glacier ; my interview with a man who had fallen into 
one of the many crevices of these glaciers, and from the 
depths of seventy feet had cut his way up with a hatchet, 
and thus rescued himself from an icy grave. I shall not 
even speak of the ascent of the Grimsel, but ask you to 
come with me at once to the summit, where there is a 



A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE ALPS. I9I 

lake called the Dead Sea, or the Lake of the Dead, into 
which the bodies of those who perished in making this 
journey were formally cast for burial. Heinrich and I 
left the path and climbed to a cliff, where we looked down 
on the pilgrim parties on horse and on foot, winding 
their way along the borders of this dark lake, and a more 
romantic sight I have not seen. We sent our guide on- 
ward to engage beds for us at the Hospice of the Grimsel, 
and resolved to spend the rest of the day (the sun was 
yet three hours high) in this wilderness of mountain 
scenery. 

We could now look down into the valley of the Grim- 
sel, a little valley, but like an immense caldron, the sides 
of which are sterile naked rocks, eight hundred feet high. 
On the west they stand like the walls and towers of a 
fortified city, and in the bottom of the vale is a single 
house and a small lake ; but a flock of one hundred goats 
and a score of cows, with their tinkling bells, are picking 
a scanty sustenance among the stones. The scene was 
wild, savage, grand indeed, and had there been no sun to 
li_ght it up with the lustre of heaven, it would have been 
dreary and dismal. Heinrich had been very thoughtful 
for about an hour. He had discovered that my thoughts 
turned constantly to the God who made all these mount- 
ains, while he was ever studying the mountains them- 
selves. He sat down on a rock, and said : 

" Here I will commune with Nature." 

I replied, "And I will go on a little farther and com- 
mune with God." 

" Stay !" he cried ; " I would go with you." 

"But you can not see him," I said. "I see him in the 
mountain and the glacier and the flower; I hear him in 
the torrent and the still, small voice of the rills and little 



192 UNDER THE TREES. 

waterfalls that are warbling ever in our ears. I feel his 
presence and something of his power. I beg j'ou to stay 
and commune with Nature, while I go and commune with 
God." 

I left him and wandered off alone, and in an hour went 
down the mountain, and to my chamber in the Hospice. 
I was sitting on the bedside, arranging the flowers I had 
gathered during the day, when Heinrich entered, and, 
giving me his hand, said to me — " I wish you would speak 
more to me of God." 

He sat down by my side, and I asked him if he believed 
the Bible to be the Word of God. 

He said he did, but he would examine it by the light 
of history and reason, and reject what he did not find to 
be true. 

"And do you believe that the soul of man will live 
hereafter in happiness or woe ?" 

" I doubt," was his desponding answer. 

I then addressed him tenderly : " My dear young friend, 
I have loved you since the hour I met you at Altorf. And 
now tell me, with all your studies have you yet learned 
how to live ? You doubt, but are you so well satisfied 
with your philosophy that you are able to look on death 
among the mountains or by the lightning without fear? 
My faith tells me that when I die my life and joy will 
just begin, and go on in glory forever. This is the source 
of all my hopes, and it gives me comfort now when I 
think that I may never see my native land and those I 
love on earth again. I know that in another land we 
shall meet." 

" How do you know that you shall meet .'"' 
"My faith tells me so. I shall meet all the good in 
heaven. I am sure of one child, an angel now," 



A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE ALPS. 193 

"And where are your children?" 

"In America, and one in heaven. I had a boy four 
years ago — earth never had a fairer. His locks were of 
gold, and hung in rich curls on a neck and shoulders 
whiter than the snow ; his brow was high and broad like 
an infant cherub's; and his eyes were blue as the evening 
sky; and he was lovelier than he was fair. But in the 
budding of his beauty he fell sick and died." 

" Oh no, not died." 

" Yes, he died here on my heart. And that child is the 
only one of mine that I am sure of ever seeing again." 

" I do not understand you." 

"If my other children grow up to doubt, as you doubt, 
they may wander away on the mountains of error or the 
glaciers of vice, and fall into some awful gulf and be 
lost forever. And if I do not live to see my living chil- 
dren, I am as sure of meeting that one now in heaven as 
if I saw him there in the light of the setting sun. Hein- 
rich, have you a mother, my dear friend ?" 

" Yes, yes," he cried ; " and her faith is the same as 
yours." 

I had seen his eyes filling, and had felt my own lips 
quivedng as I spoke, but now he burst into tears and fell 
on my breast. He kissed my lips and my cheeks and 
my forehead, and his hot tears rained on my face and 
mingled with my own. " Oh teach me the way to feel 
and believe," he said at last, as he clung to me like a 
frightened child, and clasped me convulsively to his heart. 
I held him long and tenderly, and felt for him somewhat, 
I hope, as Jesus did for the young man who came to him 
with a similar inquiry. I loved him, and longed to lead 
him to the light of day. 

N 



194 UNDER THE TREES. 

This was more than twenty years ago. My young 
friend wandered with me among the Alps for some weeks 
longer, and then returned home — and I went into the 
East. He is now a learned, able, and excellent teacher 
of Christian theology in one of the great universities of 
Germany. I often hear from him, and love him yet. 



XIX. 

A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE DEEP. 

It was just the length of time that Paul said he was 
afloat, when recounting the hard^ips he" had endured. 
Doubtless he was in far greater danger than we, and had 
not half so good a ship as ours in which to weather the 
storm. But ours was a very small affair of a steamer, and 
is not to be ill spoken of, as we are now safe on shore. 

We came from Florence to Leghorn by rail in the mid- 
dle of the day : a cloudy, rainy, but very calm, dull day ; 
just the day of all others when you would think the sea 
would be smooth. We had bought our tickets in Flor- 
ence for the steamer of that evening from Leghorn to 
Genoa. On reaching the port we learned that the steamer 
for that evening was the Francois Marie, lying nearly a 
mile off in the harbor, in the midst of scores of other ves- 
sels, and of course indistinguishable from the pier. A 
little row-boat took us and our baggage out to it. Prob- 
ably had we seen it at the sho^e, we would have been 
disposed to lose the passage money and wait for another 
ship. It was a small iron steamer, a screw, of two hun- 
dred tons, very narrow, and by the side of others near she 
looked very diminutive, and, being very dirty, was decid- 
edly repulsive. She was taking in her freight — bales of 
hemp raised in the northern part of Italy, and now shipped 
to Marseilles. Her hold was filled to its utmost capacity, 
and some freight was left for which there was no room. 



196 UNDER THE TREES. 

We knew that we were "heavy laden." Then some kegs 
of specie arrived. This was encouraging, for money is 
not usually sent by doubtful carriers. Then came the 
mails. This was even more assuring. It was the regular 
mail line : every night from Leghorn to Genoa. 

We went down into the cabin. It was just wide enough 
for a table, and a passage between it and the state-rooms. 
There were but two or three of these on a side, but they 
were sufficiently numerous, as we two were the only pas- 
sengers. By-and-by a«Maltese gentleman came on .board 
and raised the number to three. The sea was placid. 
The rain had ceased. The sun had gone down in a 
dense black mass of cloud that in our country would 
have presaged a storm, but the rough captain assured us 
that we should have a beautiful night, and be in Genoa 
before daylight. Eight hours was the usual passage. We 
were to sail at five. Five came, and the freight was not 
on board. Six, and they were still at work taking in 
more. The lazy, easy, good-for-nothing way they hoisted 
the bales was amusing, if we had not been anxious to get 
off. But an Italian never cares, never thinks, how long it 
takes him to do any thing. The only thing in the world 
he has enough of is time. He can spend as much of that 
as he pleases, and have plenty to spare. It often takes 
half an hour to get a draft cashed at the banker's. The 
old clerk, or the old banker himself, looks at your letters, 
goes and consults one or two others in the room, sits 
down at his desk, takes a pinch of snuff, comes and asks 
how you will have it, in gold or paper ; returns ; reckons 
his commission of half per cent. ; thinks the matter 
over a while ; gives his nose a tremendous blast with a 
silk handkerchief j and finally, after you have given two 
signatures of your name, he gives you a ticket to the 



A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE DEEP. I97 

cashier, who with a small shovel scoops up the gold, and 
it is yours. The same indolent habit of business prevails 
in every department of life, from the banker to the boat- 
man and stevedore. Passengers' time is nothing. The 
advertised time of sailing is of no account. They go 
when they are ready, and they are ready when it suits 
their convenience to work and get ready. Seven came, 
and there were no signs of sailing. The captain came 
down into the cabin, took up a trap-door, and into it went 
a dirty little boy of his — more like a son of Vulcan, so 
black with coal and grime he was. To him was let down 
the specie ; he stowed it away in some place known only 
to him and the captain. The trap-door was then closed 
and the money considered safe. Eight o'clock came, and 
the freight was all in. Dinner had been served to us in 
the cabin, for which we were charged extra, after having 
paid an enormous fare — $6 apiece — for the eight hours' 
run. Nine o'clock arrived, and soon after the grinding 
of the screw gave sensible notice that we were under way. 
Smoothly we passed out of the harbor, and wearied with 
a long and tedious day of waiting, and with no anxious 
thoughts about the night, we went to bed and to sleep. 

" The cradle of the deep " is favorable to sleep. Many 
sleep more soundly at sea than on shore. Even in storms, 
the motion, if somewhat uniform, does not always disturb, 
and the berth is the best refuge for one addicted to the 
sickness of the sea. About midnight a crash in an empty 
room roused us from sleep ; a shaky berth had given way 
in a sudden lurch of the ship. We were rolling out also. 
The next moment we were rolling in, and quite over the 
other way. The crash of the waves against the vessel, 
the roar of the wind, the unsteady roll and pitch of the 
ship, told us very plainly that a gale was on us, all the 



198 UNDER THE TREES. 

more unpleasant as it was sudden and unexpected. My 
traveling companion, decidedly more aquatic in his tastes 
and habits than I, clambered up the stairs to take ob- 
servations. It was a night when the blackness of dark- 
ness was on the face of the deep. Rain poured in tor- 
rents in the very thick of a furious gale. All hands 
were at work lashing every thing fast, and putting the 
little craft into condition for the worst that might come. 
For us there was nothing but to wait. In a better ship 
we would have had no fears of the results. Doubtless 
the vessel had gone through many worse nights than 
this, and why not again ? Then came the suggestions of 
faith, hope, and the sweet experience of other dangers 
passed safely; and as hours dragged themselves slowly 
and drearily along, we used all these sources of comfort 
and found them good. 

At such times one studies the things around him to 
form some estimate of the rising or subsiding of the gale. 
The lamp in the centre of the cabin swung freely, and 
this was a pendulum to mark the length of every roll. 
Soon its motion became too swift for pleasant contem- 
plation, and the glass shade was smitten by striking the 
ceiling. Now we were in total darkness. The steward 
rigged another lamp, but it soon went over and out. 
Every moment the sense of danger became more ap- 
parent, yet there was nothing for us to do but to wait. 
The hours wore on slowly, but the longest and darkest 
and dreariest night in the world has a morning to it, and 
we knew there was one to ours. A tremendous shock, as 
if some new engine of destruction had hurled a mountain 
against the ship, and for a moment she seemed to stop in 
her course, to shake herself from stem to stern, trembling 
and uncertain what to do ; and then the steady screw 



A NIGHT AND A DAY IN THE DEEP. 1 99 

screwed on and on, and the brave little vessel emerged 
from the wave that had smitten and covered her and 
moved on as before. Again and again, in the thick dark- 
ness of this tempestuous night, was the shock repeated, 
and as often we paused, hesitated, and then plunged 
along. "And oh, how welcome was the morning light !" 
I crept up in my berth to the port-hole above, and looked 
out on the boiling sea ; it seemed to be rushing up from 
some horrid gulf in the bowels of the earth, and making 
sport of the vessel, that danced and rolled and pitched 
like an eggshell on the hissing and seething caldron of 
waters. 

At this juncture word was brought down to us that we 
had better get ready for the worst, as it was impossible 
to say what was before us. But there was no preparation 
necessary, as the ship was the safest place, and one part 
of it was as safe as another. In a few moments we were 
reassured. No danger was apprehendedc Land was in 
sight. We knew where we were. That was some com- 
fort. But we were farther from Genoa, our destined port, 
than when we started ten hours ago. In the darkness 
of the night it was safer to keep off the coast; we had 
stood out to sea, had shot by the port, and now took the 
back track and toiled on, the storm increasing in fury 
every hour. The headlands were familiar to the Corsican 
captain, a rough fellow, who did his duty as well as he 
could under the circumstances, and kept sober, to my 
great comfort. It was in the afternoon when the City of 
Palaces — Genoa the Superb — burst upon our sight. The 
gale had not abated, but the rain had ceased ; the sun 
was struggling through the clouds, and a blessed, beautiful 
rainbow was spanning the city with its arch of hope. In 
1492 a son of Genoa discovered America. Not to him 



200 UNDER THE TREES, 

was the sight of our land more grateful than that of his 
native city was to us from the land he found. Our sail- 
ors shook hands, laughed, leaped, and danced for joy. 
Above the roar of the winds and waves I heard Grazie a 
Dio — thanks to God — and my heart echoed the praise. 
Two hours more and rougher sailing brought us safely 
into port, and a few steps into the snug harbor of the 
Hotel d'ltalie. 

This storm swept the sea from Naples to Gibraltar. 
Between Naples and Leghorn more than fifty vessels 
were driven ashore or lost at sea. A great number of 
lives were lost. For weeks afterward the newspapers 
had reports of wrecks all along the coast. The day after 
we got into port the steamers that attempted to leave the 
harbor were compelled to give it up and return. For 
many days not a sail was to be seen on the sea. Between 
several of the ports navigation was suspended for a week. 



XX. 

A PARSON'S STORY. 

It is not a romance. It is a narrative of facts, which I 
give you as nearly as possible in the words of the village 
pastor : 

I. 

She was gasping when I came in. Her sickness had 
been sudden and severe, and before we were prepared 
for the terrible event, we knew that death was at the 
door. 

The house in which Mrs. Bell had lived for twenty 
years was an old-fashioned mansion on the hill overlook- 
ing the village and the bay, and a wide expanse of mead- 
ow that stretched away to the water's edge. On the side 
toward the sea was a long piazza, a favorite resort of the 
family in summer, when the weather was pleasant. I 
was walking on it, and now and then looking off upon 
the world below, but with my thoughts more turned upon 
the scenes that were passing within. 

I had been sent for a few hours before, and to my con- 
sternation and grief had found Mrs. Bell already given up 
by her physicians, and her life rapidly rushing to its close. 
Her disease was inflammatory. Its progress had defied 
all human skill, and two days had brought her to this. 
It was hard to believe it. But why should I be so dis- 
tressed with the result, when others were suffering an- 
guish which even my sympathies could not reach to re- 



202 UNDER THE TREES. 

lieve? Exhausted with my vain but earnest efiforts to 
soothe the heart-rending grief of those who clung to the 
dying, I had left the chamber. 

Mrs. Bell was a member of my church. Mr. Bell was 
not. He was reputed to be a man of means, and was 
known to be living easily, doing but little business, and 
apparently caring for nothing in the future. No one sus- 
pected that this indifference had resulted in the gradual 
wasting away of the property he had inherited : mort- 
gages covering all the landed estates he was known to 
possess, till even the homestead was in danger. 

But the pride of my parish was in this family. Two 
daughters, with only the difference of a year in their ages, 
and now just coming up into womanhood, were the only 
children of Mr. and Mrs. Bell. Sarah was the oldest, 
and her blue eyes and yellow hair were like her mother's, 
and the younger, Mary, had inherited from her father a 
radiant black eye, and locks of the raven hue. They 
were sisters in heart, soul, and mind, though a stranger 
would not have taken theln to be the children of the 
same mother. Such love as bound them was wonderful 
to me, who, as the pastor of the family, was often there, 
and knew them well. I had watched its growth for ten 
years, and frequently had remarked that it exceeded in 
tenderness and devotion any thing of the kind that had 
ever fallen under my notice. Mrs. Bell had a thousand- 
fold more opportunities of putting it to the test, and of 
seeing it tried in the daily and hourly intercourse of the 
family, and she had told me that she had never known a 
moment of failure in the season of childhood and of 
youth, when the temper is often tried, and children are 
called on to make sacrifices for one another in little 
things, far greater tests of love than the struggles of aft- 



A PARSON S STORY. 203 

er-Hfe. She had observed, and had mentioned to me, a 
mysterious sympathy between them even from very early 
years. Their minds were turned at one and the same 
moment toward the same subject, when there appeared 
to be nothing suggestive of the train of thought engaging 
them both. A secret thread seemed to connect their 
souls, so that what was passing in one's mind was often 
at vi'ork in the other's. Instead of provoking dissension, 
as such a coincidence would naturally produce, it was 
rather a bond of union, leading them to love the same 
pleasures^ and to study and labor to promote each other's 
joys. This was the more remarkable as their natural 
temperaments were unlike. The eldest was sanguine and 
cheerful, a sunbeam always shining in the house, glad and 
making glad — the brightest, happiest, gleefulest girl in 
my parish. Mary was sedate. Like her father, she was 
not inclined to action. Even in her childhood a tinge of 
melancholy gave a coloring to her life. She was fond of 
reading and retirement. When alone, her thoughts were 
her own. Her love for Sarah, and her filial love, made 
her faithful as a sister and a child ; but there was a trait 
of character in which her sister, with all their sympathy, 
did not share. It was requisite, this contrast, to make 
them two. There was individuality, notwithstanding the 
kin-tie of spirit binding them as one, in a deep, earnest, 
true-hearted love that knew no break or change. But I 
am dwelling on these features of the children while the 
mother is dying. I was walking up and down the piazza, 
thinking of the awful work death was making in this 
house ; of the wondrous love that bound mother and 
daughters, now to be no barrier in the way of this fell de- 
stroyer, half wishing I had the power to stay his arm, 
and drive him out of the paradise he was about to blast 



204 UNDER THE TREES. 

with his breath, when a servant summoned me to the 
chamber. 

She was gasping as I entered. The fever raging in 
her veins had suffused her cheeks with crimson ; the rich 
hair, which, according to the custom of the times — for 
this was many, many years ago — she had worn in a mass 
sustained by a comb on the back of her head, now hung 
in great ringlets on her shoulders, and her eyes, sparkling 
with the last light of life, were fixed on her daughters 
kneeling at the bedside, giving vent to their bitter grief 
in floods of tears, and sobs they strove in vain to sup- 
press. 

Yet she knew me. She raised her hand as I came in, 
and said to me as I approached, " I know that my Re- 
deemer liveth." Before I could find words, she added : 
" My children — the poor girls — be kind to them — be 
a friend to my dear husband." It was her last effort. 
While I had been out of the room she had taken leave 
of those dearest in life, and was now breathing away her 
spirit calmly, for she was not afraid to die — peacefully, 
for the pains of death were past. 

It was all over. The stricken daughters were borne 
from the room by kind friends. The husband, betraying 
less emotion than we thought he would show in the midst 
of such a scene, retired, and I was for a moment alone 
with the dead. Wondrous the change that an instant 
had wrought ! Out on an unknown sea the soul had 
drifted, and left this wreck upon the shore^a dissolving 
hulk — a heap of clay that would soon be loathsome to 
those who an hour ago were hanging over it with intens- 
est love, covering it with kisses, and folding it in their 
arms. They call this awful work by the name of death. 
But this is not the last of Mrs. Bell — the lovely, living Mrs. 



A PARSON'S STORY. 205 

Bell. She is not dead. This is not the wife, the mother, 
the friend. She is not here. And as she is not here, we 
can do nothing more for her. 

A few days afterward we laid her in the grave. She 
was a great favorite among our people, and they were all 
present at her burial. The grief of the daughters was 
for the present inconsolable ; it was kindness to let them 
weep freely, and have their own way in the first gush of 
their great sorrow. Perhaps time would do something 
for them. Religion would shed a soothing influence over 
their crushed and bleeding hearts, but now it was better 
to let the streams of affection flow along in these gushing 
tears, for there is a medicine in weeping that is the first 
remedy of grief, 

II. 

Mr. Bell died in less than a year. He was seized with 
a fit of apoplexy while sitting on the piazza after dinner, 
and died without a word. 

The daughters were not at home, but were sent for in 
haste, and arrived just as I did, being called again to 
the house where so recently I had seen the fairest and 
fondest of mothers expire. The body of Mr. Bell, dress- 
ed as he died, was lying on the same bed which I had 
last seen when the corpse of his wife was there. It 
seemed but the day before. Not a change had been 
made. The same Bible lay on the same stand, near the 
bed, and I had heard that he read it oftener since the 
death of his wife. The same bureau with drawers and 
covered with a white cloth, a few choice books standing 
on it, was on the other side of the room, and a large easy- 
chair stuffed and clothed with dimity, and a few simple 
but very convenient articles completed the furniture of 



206 UNDER THE TREES.. 

the apartment. But instead of the pale form of my gen- 
tle friend, Mrs. Bell, lovely even in death, there was lying 
on that white counterpane the large and now blackened 
corpse of her husband. The physician, who had been 
early on the ground, had found him dead. The case was 
a plain one. Indeed, he had been often warned of such 
an event, but his habitual fondness for putting things off 
had led him to neglect all means of improving or pre- 
serving his health, and he had been cut down in the midst 
of his days. 

But the daughters. They were orphans now. They 
clung to me as to the friend on whom they might lean, 
and who would not forget the dying request of their saint- 
ed mother. They had loved their father with all the ear- 
nestness of their nature, and all the more since the death 
of their mother had made him dependent on them for a 
thousand nameless acts and arts of kindness which he 
had ever received from his faithful wife. And the lone- 
liness that now lay before them was so appalling that 
they feared to look into the future. They had no broth- 
er, no relative to whom they might turn. It was not 
strange that such thoughts pressed on them, even at the 
side of their dead father, and that in the midst of their 
anguish under this sudden and overwhelming blow they 
should every now and then cry out, " What shall we do ?" 
And who could answer the question ? 

If it were a sad and fearful inquiry while as yet we 
believed that Mr. Bell had left behind him a large and 
handsome property, it was more distressing still when a 
few weeks after his death it was discovered that he was 
hopelessly involved in debt, and after the claims of his 
creditors were but partially satisfied, if would leave noth- 
ing — not a cent, not the homestead, not the house, not 



A PARSON S STORY. 207 

even the furniture — to his daughters. He was a bankrupt, 
and had been for a long time past; but he had no energy 
to meet the calamity, and death came on him just as his 
affairs were reaching a crisis that put further concealment 
of the state of his affairs out of the question. Perhaps 
the coming disclosure hastened the blow that killed him. 
But the facts could no longer be hid even from those 
whom they must crush. Poor girls ! In every sense 
that makes the word poor a term of pity, these girls were 
now poor indeed. Had it been possible for me in my 
circumstances to have assumed the burden, I would glad- 
ly have taken them to my own home, and made them 
sharers with my children in the weal or woe in store for 
us all. This I could not in justice do. But something 
must 'be done, and that with no delay. The estate was 
administered upon in a few weeks, and as there were no 
funds to meet the debts, the law took its course, and the 
orphans were homeless. 

Their education had been domestic. Mrs. Bell had 
been their teacher. They were well-read girls, but not 
fitted to teach others. So that door was not open to 
them. Sarah particularly, with a fine imagination and a 
decidedly poetical turn of mind, was familiar with the lit- 
erature of her own language, which she was accustomed 
to read with her mother. Many of her letters are now 
in my possession, and they are clothed in language at 
once graceful and rich, and some of them are beautiful in 
style and thought. Mary had less taste for reading, yet 
she thought more and felt deeper than her sister. In the 
retirement of that home circle the mother and daughters, 
with an industry more common perhaps in those days 
than it is in the present, had made needle-work their 
chief employment ; and it was natural that the girls should 



2o8 UNDER THE TREES. 

turn to that in which they were the most expert as the 
means on which they must rely for their main support, 
now that they were thrown upon their own resources or 
upon the charity of the world. They had too much self- 
reliance and too much confidence in God to trust them- 
selves to the kindness of friends who, in the impulse of 
sudden sympathy, might offer to do for them what would 
soon prove to be a task and a burden. No ; they would 
meet the emergency with the energy of faith and hope, 
knowing that God helps those who heJp themselves. 
They gave themselves scant time for mourning. They 
left the home of their infancy and childhood — the third 
great sorrow of their lives. But now that father and 
mother were both gone, even the honeysuckle that climb- 
ed up the piazza, and the beds of flowers they had plant- 
ed and tended with their own hands, and the fruit that 
hung in rich abundance in the garden, lost half their val- 
ue — they served rather to remind them of days when in 
happy youth they had enjoyed them all with the parents 
they had lost ; and it was almost a relief to turn their 
backs upon the home they had loved, and seek a hum- 
ble lodging in the village. 

III. 

For they are sewing-girls now. It was nothing that 
they were young and pretty and well-bred. They must 
have food and raiment and shelter, and they could earn 
all by the labor of their hands. They were not the girls 
to shrink from the contest with pride and opinion, and the 
thousand and one mortifications to which this new and 
trying life would lead. Sarah led and Mary followed. 
They had no words about it. Sarah proposed it, and 
Mary had been thinking of the same plan. It was the 



A parson's story. 209 

only one before them. And it was not so hopeless as it 
might be. They had many friends. They would find 
work, plenty of it, and it would be sweeter to live on the 
bread of honest industry than to ask the charity of any 
one, or to receive it without asking. It was a noble res- 
olution. They consulted me before coming to a decis- 
ion, and I could not oppose their scheme, though I had 
no heart to counsel them to go on with it. The future 
would be so unlike the past. These sensitive natures — 
these children as they were to me, who had known them 
so long as children only — to be exposed to the rough- 
and-tumble of the life of orphans, was bad enough under 
almost any aspect of the case. But to be harassed by 
the daily vexations, and wearied by the daily toils of the 
life of a seamstress, was more than I could think of with- 
out tears ; and I admired the fortitude with which they 
addressed themselves to the work they had assumed. 

Mrs. Benson was a friend indeed. She was of one of 
the most influential families in my flock, and had been 
the bosom friend of Mrs. Bell while she was yet with us. 
Mrs. Benson offered the girls a home, and when they de- 
clined her generous proposal, she insisted on their look- 
ing to her as to a mother in the future, whatever might be 
the issue of the new and untried experiment they were 
about to make. We shall, however, overrate the heroism 
of the girls if we measure it by the sacrifice of feeling 
which such a mode of life would require at the present 
time. In our rural village of a thousand inhabitants the 
girls would not be the less esteemed by any of the better 
sort of people for their new employment. On the con- 
trary, the door of every house would be open to them, and 
every voice would be one of kindness to greet them when 
they came. 

O 



2IO UNDER THE TREES. 

" I shall die, I know I shall," said Mary, as they were 
alone in the snug parlor of the old homestead for the last 
time. " I feel it here " — as she laid her hand on her side, 
and pressed her beating heart. "I can never leave it, 
and feel that it is to be no home of ours again." 

" But, Mary dear," said her more hopeful sister, " we 
could not be at home if we stayed here. It is all gloomy 
now, and what there is to love will be as much ours here- 
after as it ever was. These walks will be here, and these 
trees and flowers, and we will often come and look on 
them ; for whoever lives here will never deny us the priv- 
ilege. And we are to do for ourselves now. It is too 
soon to be discouraged. God will help us, and that right 
early." 

" Yes, Sister Sarah, I know all that, and more, but I 
am afraid. It is dreadful^ this going out into the world 
alone. It looks so dark. My head aches when I think 
of it. A great black cloud seems to be hanging over us; 
and sometimes I think I am growing blind, every thing 
is so dark before me. Tell me now, truly, have you had 
no such fears ?" 

" But I will not give them room in my thoughts for a 
moment. They do come to me as to you, and sometimes 
they frighten me, but I drive them away, and look to God 
for strength. Fearful thoughts never come from him. 
He is our Father now more than ever, and has promised 
that he will never leave nor forsake us." 

Mary was silenced, but not satisfied. Sarah could thus 
reason her into resignation, but it was still very dark and 
trying ; and to her desponding nature there was some- 
thing in store for them more terrible than they had yet 
experienced. The presentiment was dim and might be 
idle, but it was deep-seated and absorbing. She said it 



A PARSON'S STORY. 211 

was in her heart, but it was in her brain. She often 
pressed her hand hard on her forehead, and then thrust 
her head into Sarah's bosom, not weeping, but asking her 
sister to hide her from the terrible fate that gathered 
about her, and threatened to blast them both in the morn- 
ing of their grief. 

IV. 

" What will George say ?" had been a question often 
on Sarah's mind when coming to this decision, that she 
must be a seamstress. George had never told her that 
he loved her, but he had been kind and attentive, and a 
thousand nameless acts had given her the assurance that 
he was more to her than a friend. She was not insensi- 
ble. Sarah would have loved him had he sought her 
love. Happily for her own peace, he had made no ad- 
vances ; and when he learned that she and her sister were 
not only orphans but poor, he discovered that he had no 
particular regard for either of them, and with no words 
left them to their fate. Perhaps this blow to Sarah's 
hopes, for she had hopes, was necessary to complete the 
misery of her portion. A noble, faithful friend to stand 
by her in such an hour would have been like life to the 
dead. There was no such stay for her now. And the 
two sisters, finding that few friends are born for adversity, 
prepared to go forth hand in hand, and trusting only in 
God, to do what they could for themselves. 

Mrs. Benson was always ready with plenty of work for 
them when they had nothing to do elsewhere. She made 
it for them, not that she had need of their aid, and so 
cheated them into the belief that they were indispensable 
for her comfort, while she was only ministering to theirs. 



212 UNDER THE TREES. 

V. 

Mrs. Flint was the housekeeper of Mrs. Benson. She 
had now held this situation for many years, never gaining 
the confidence of the lady whose domestic affairs she had 
superintended with so much zeal and discretion as to 
render herself indispensable to the house. But she was 
very far from securing the affections of any of its inmates. 
A married daughter of hers in the village was even less a 
favorite than she in the -family of Mrs. Benson. Perhaps 
the evident partiality which Mrs. Benson had exhibited 
for the young ladies, who were now \iQ.x protegees, and her 
failure to interest Mrs. Benson in her daughter, may have 
been the occasion of a feeling of enmity which she had 
cherished toward these girls ever since they had become 
the occasional members of the family. Yet it is needless 
to speculate upon the causes which led to the indulgence 
of such feelings. A bad heart affords the only explana- 
tion of the phenomenon ; for such it certainly appears to 
anyone who came to the knowledge of the fact that a wom- 
an could cherish in her heart a desire to injure two un- 
protected orphans, whose helpless situation and exceeding 
innocence of character won for them the universal love 
and confidence of the community. Without stopping, 
therefore, to speculate upon the causes of her enmity, it is 
enough to say that she conceived and carried into execu- 
tion a plan for the destruction of their character. She 
accused them to Mrs. Benson of having purloined many 
articles of clothing ; and when the declaration was made, 
and was received by Mrs. Benson with indignant excla- 
mations of incredulity, she demanded that the basket 
which they had brought with them should be searched, 
and expressed her willingness to abide by the result of 



A PARSON'S STORY. 213 

the examination. She declared that she had seen one of 
them coming from the wardrobe in the morning, and un- 
der circumstances that left no doubt upon her own mind 
that she had been there for no proper purpose. 

More for the sake of convincing her housekeeper of the 
innocence of those whom she had so recklessly accused 
than with any idea of making a discovery that should 
even awaken suspicion in her own mind, Mrs. Benson 
consented to the search ; and while the girls were engaged 
upon their work below, Mrs. Benson and the housekeeper 
proceeded to the apartment which had been occupied by 
the girls, where Mrs. Flint immediately produced from the 
bottom of the basket the articles, of no great value, to be 
sure, but enough to fix upon them the guilt which Mrs. 
Flint had already imputed to them. Still Mrs. Benson 
was not satisfied. The confidence of years was not to be 
destroyed, even by such a disclosure as this. But what 
could she say ? Mrs. Flint, with vehemence, insisted upon 
calling up the girls, setting before them the evidence of 
their shame, and compelling them, with the proof before 
their own eyes, to confess their guilt. 

Bewildered by the painful circumstances for which she 
was utterly unable to account, and hoping that they would 
be able to make some explanation of the unpleasant facts, 
Mrs. Benson consented to summon them to the chamber, 
and to hear from their own lips such explanation as they 
might be able to offer. At her call they came bounding 
into the room, with conscious innocence in their faces, 
and wondering at the occasion of being called at such an 
hour to meet Mrs. Benson in her own room. She held 
up before them what would appear to be indisputable evi- 
dence that they had been seeking to rob their best friend ; 
and with trembling voice and tearful eyes she begged 



214 UNDER THE TREES. 

them to tell her by what means these evidences of their 
wrong had thus been secreted. To her astonishment, 
they both received her inquiries and disclosures with a 
ringing laugh. This could mean only utter unconscious- 
ness of evil, if it were not the evidence of a hardened de- 
pravity inconsistent with their previous history. 

When they came, however, to view the subject in a more 
serious light, and to perceive the necessity of giving some 
account of the circumstances in which they were involved, 
they could do. nothing more than to declare their utter ig-. 
norance of the way and the manner by which they had so 
suddenly come into possession ; and looking at Mrs. Flint, 
whose eyes fell to the floor when they attempted to catch 
her attention, they united in the declaration that some 
evil -disposed person must have secreted the articles 
among their things for the purpose of fastening upon them 
the suspicion of theft. Mrs. Flint declared that no one 
exceptiog herself and Mrs. Benson had been in the house, 
or had any access whatever to their apartments, and it 
was quite impossible to suppose that these things could 
be found there without hands ; and if not without hands, 
whose could they have been, unless those of the young la- 
dies in whose possession these things had been so prov- 
identially discovered .-' 

" But how came they to be discovered ?" demanded the 
girls. 

This was a question for which Mrs. Flint was unpre- 
pared ; but recovering herself, she said that for some 
time past her suspicions had been excited by having 
missed various articles, which she had never mentioned 
to Mrs. Benson, and which she was resolved not to men- 
tion until she should be able to account for their disap- 
pearance ; that, accordingly, she had kept her eye upon 



A parson's story. 215 

the girls since they came into the house, and having no- 
ticed one of them that morning under circumstances that 
led her to suspect all was not right, she had taken the 
liberty, in 'their absence from the room, of examining the 
apartment — and this was the result. 

Roused by a sense of the great injustice which had 
been done them, yet scarcely able to believe that so much 
malice could be in the human heart, unable to imagine a 
reason that could prompt any human being to devise and 
execute such a plan of mischief against them, they, never- 
theless, in conscious innocence, united in charging upon 
Mrs. Flint, with courage which injured virtue always sum- 
mons to its own defense, with having contrived this de- 
testable scheme for their ruin; and throwing themselves 
upon the mercy and upon the neck of Mrs. Benson, they 
begged her, for the sake of their mother, now in heaven, 
for their own sakes — helpless and friendless as they were 
in the world — not to believe this terrible charge, of which 
they declared themselves to be as guiltless as the spirit 
of her who bore them. 

Mrs. Benson believed them. With all the confidence 
of a mother, trusting in the purity of daughters whose ev- 
ery word and action she had known and loved from in- 
fancy, she took them to her heart, and assured them that, 
however dark the circumstances might appear, however 
difficult it might be to explain them, she would believe 
that God would yet make' it plain, and that whatever oth- 
ers might think, she for one would cherish no suspicion. 

This was a dark chapter in the history of the orphans. 
Hitherto misfortune had followed fast upon the heel of 
misfortune. The "clouds had returned after the rain;" 
but the sorrows which they had experienced had been 
such as left them in the enjoyment of that priceless treas- 



2l6 UNDER THE TREES. 

ure — a character above reproach or suspicion. Now the 
cloud that hung over them was daricer than any which 
had ever yet obscured their path. For they began to feel 
how vain would be all their own efforts to stem the tide 
of adversity, unless they had not only the present con- 
sciousness of virtue, but the sweet assurance of the re- 
spect and confidence to which it would entitle them. 

It was a cheerless circle that surrounded the table at 
Mrs. Benson's that evening ; few words were spoken, but 
every heart was full of its own reflections upon the events 
of the day, and their probable influence upon the parties 
interested. Mrs. Benson's mind was made up as to the 
course it was her duty to pursue with reference to the 
woman who, she had no doubt, was the evil genius in her 
house, and to whose malignant jealousy of the orphans 
she was compelled to attribute this fiendish attempt at 
their ruin. Still she desired so to manage the affair as 
to prevent any future mischief resulting to them from the 
tongue of Mrs. Flint, when she should dispense with her 
services in the house. 

In the retirement of their chamber the sisters wept to- 
gether over this new sorrow ; they sought strength from 
God, to whom alone they had learned to look for help in 
extremities ; and hour after hour, as they lay in each oth- 
er's arms, they sought to cheer one another with words 
that did not speak the feelings of their hearts ; and it 
was not until long after midnight that disturbed sleep 
gave them a brief and imperfect respite from the grief 
now thickening around and upon them. It was impossi- 
ble to escape the apprehension that Mrs. Benson's confi- 
dence in their integrity had been shaken ; and they could 
not but feel that, were she lost to them, all on earth was 
lost ; and then, so often had they already been compelled 



A parson's story. 217 

to experience the failure of all earthly friendship, they 
would seek to persuade themselves that, even in the last 
and most trying circumstances to which they could be 
subjected, there was One ever above and near them to 
whom they might flee for succor, and whose promises, 
made to their mother in her dying hour, would never f^il. 

A few days afterward Mrs. Flint left the house of 
Mrs. Benson, going to her married daughter's dwelling, 
which she made her home for the future. It was 
not long before the sisters found that her tongue was 
busy; that she had correctly interpreted the reason of 
her dismissal ; and now, more than she ever had done, 
sought to work their destruction for the sake of revenge. 
Whatever might have been the deficiency of motive in 
her case when she first meditated mischief, she had now 
abundant excitement in the fact that the failure of her 
scheme had wrought her own injury. Stung by the mor- 
tification of her own discharge, she sought to expend the 
violence and bitterness of her own feelings in circulating, 
with malicious expedition, the story which would serve 
at once the double purpose of injuring the orphans and 
accounting for her own retirement from the service of 
Mrs. Benson. 

The girls saw the effects before they heard the cause. 
Friends in whose doors they had been welcomed now re- 
ceived them with coldness. Those who had sought their 
services fell away, and they soon found themselves en- 
tirely dependent upon their truly maternal friend, Mrs. 
Benson, who alone, of all the circle in which they 
had formerly been received, stood by them. So wide- 
spread is the mischief which an evil report occasions. 
It was in vain that Mrs. Benson asserted her belief in the 
innocence of the sisters. The community took the side 



2l8 UNDER THE TREES. 

of her whom they believed to have been unjustly accused, 
and to have been discharged when all the evidences of 
wrong were against the parties whom Mrs. Benson had 
sheltered with what they believed an overweening confi- 
dence. 

VI. 

So strong became the prejudice against these unfortu- 
nate girls that their employment gradually fell off, until 
it became evident that they must be dependent upon Mrs. 
Benson for their daily bread, or must seek in some other 
place a more favorable opportunity of sustaining them- 
selves. Their friend and patron kindly assisted them in 
establishing themselves in a neighboring village, where it 
was believed they might be able to pursue their work, and 
by degrees gain the confidence of the community. But 
with a vindictiveness rarely to be found in the female 
sex, and painful to be contemplated wherever observed, 
Mrs. Flint followed them to their new home, and soon 
spread widely, where they were now seeking to estab- 
lish for themselves a character, the report that they 
had been compelled to leave their native village under 
suspicions of dishonesty. They struggled heroically 
against this new dispensation of evil, but in vain. A few- 
weeks had scarcely elapsed before it became evident that 
they would be utterly unable to make progress in this 
new field, and that the few friends whom they had made 
were not proof against the insidious effects of slander, 
which was now undermining them. Indeed, so strong 
became the popular feeling of indignation against them, 
as suspicious and dangerous young women who had come 
into the place because they were unable to live in anoth- 
er where they were better known, that the house in which 
they lodged was surrounded by a mob, and demonstra- 



A parson's story. 219 

tions of violence were made. When they heard the 
alarm which came up from the street, and were told that 
they were the occasion of the disturbance, trembling lest 
they might be the victims of personal violence, their fright 
became insupportable. Mary, the less excitable of the 
two, sat moody and speechless. 

" They are coming !" she exclaimed at last ; " they are 
coming for us. We shall be driven out ; perhaps we shall 
be killed. What shall we do ?" 

Sarah, more excited, but always more hopeful, strove to 
allay her alarm, beseeching her not to lose her trust in 
God, but to hope for the best. Through the help of the 
man whose house they were dwelling in, Sarah succeed- 
ed, after a while, in inducing the rioters in the street to 
retire, after having given them the assurance that they 
would on the next day return to the village from which 
they had come. 

But they had to be taken there. And it was a tnonth 
before that could be done. The fearful presentiment of 
some greater sorrow — the great black cloud — was made 
real — Mary was laid upon a bed of suffering with a brain 
fever, and Sarah was by turns a gentle and then a raving 
maniac. God help the orphans. 

VII. 

A year in their native village passes by. 

They are now hopelessly deranged. Wandering in 
the streets, singing loose and ribald songs — a source of 
intensest grief to all those who had known them in the 
loveliness of their childhood and youth — they were ob- 
jects also of the tenderest compassion ; and had there 
been at this time any provision for the care and cure of 
the insane, doubtless they would have found a refuge in 



220 UNDER THE TREES. 

some such asylum. Human skill had not yet contrived 
such institutions, and the insane were only prevented 
from doing injury to others by being confined among 
the most miserable and degraded of the public poor. As 
the girls manifested no disposition to do violence to oth- 
ers, and were cheerful rather than gloomy in their mad- 
ness, they were suffered to go at large ; and many sought 
by kindness to win them back again to a state of quiet- 
ness and peace. Often, when led by the hand of friend- 
ship into the houses of those who would care for them, 
they were known to leap from the window into the street, 
as if apprehensive of being confined. 

As yet they were never, even in their worst state, in- 
sensible to the voice of love. My own house was freely 
opened to them as a home, where I sought, by all the as- 
siduity which my affection for their parents could sug- 
gest, to administer the balm of comfort, if I could not 
furnish the balm of healing, to their wounded minds. 

One instance occurs to me of peculiar interest. They 
were invited, as not unfrequently they had been before, 
to spend a social evening with some of the young people 
of the village ; and in the midst of the lively associations 
of the evening, their spirits seemed to revive. Something 
of their former gentleness and loveliness began to return. 
Yet now, so far had the work of ruin gone on in the minds 
of these young girls, that they not only had forgotten 
many of their early friends and associates, but, strange to 
say, they had forgotten the relationship between them- 
selves. They knew each other only as companions. At 
the close of the evening they were invited to spend the 
night at the house where the entertainment had been 
given ; and after retiring to bed, and lying in each other's 
arms, soothed by the pleasures which they had been en- 



A PARSONS STORY. 221 

joying, and the circumstances of comfort by which they 
found themselves surrounded, a cahn serenity of mind 
stole over them, fond memory came back with all its 
sweet influences, and gradually the truth broke in upon 
their souls that they were sisters. In mutual recogni- 
tion, and in the fullness of that affection which had been 
uninterrupted from infancy, they spent the most of the 
night in delightful union of spirit, forgetful, of course, of 
all that had occurred in the hours and months of their 
delirium ; yet remembering that some great sorrow had 
once shed its gloom over their minds, and that they were 
now in the midst of friends and pleasures which it was 
their privilege to enjoy. They arose in the morning re- 
freshed by a night, not of sleep, but of sweet peace. 
Alas ! it was but for a night. Before the day was gone 
the cloud gathered over them once more ; delirium seized 
them ; they rushed forth from the house of their protect- 
or and friend, and again in the streets of the village re- 
newed their wild mirth, piercing the ears and the hearts 
of those who heard them. 

VIII. 

It was now late in the summer. Mrs. Flint had been 
for some weeks confined to her bed with a wasting fever. 
I was sent for to see her, and was out in the country vis- 
iting a parishioner some miles from my home. I had seen 
her several times during her sickness, and was well con- 
vinced that her disease would have a fatal termination. 
As soon as I returned home and learned that I had been 
sent for, I hastened to the cottage ; as I entered, a scene 
of strange and thrilling interest was before my eyes. The 
woman was dying, and kneeling at her bedside were 
these two wild girls. 



222 UNDER THE TREES. 

I soon learned the facts that had brought them there 
under such strange and exciting circumstances. They 
had been wandering, as usual, through the streets ; and 
when the sound of their mirth broke in upon the hearing 
of the dying woman, she inquired what it was. Being 
told that Sarah and Mary Bell were carrying on as they 
were accustomed to, she started at the mention of their 
names, and begged that they might be called in. They 
came at the call, and without hesitation approached the 
bed on which their enemy and destroyer was now stretch- 
ed, in hourly expectation of death, 

" I did it !" said Mrs. Flint ; " it is all my work ; and 
here, as I am now about to leave this world and go into 
the presence of God, I would not go without clearing 
these girls of that great sin which I laid to their charge, 
but which God knoWs they are as innocent of as the an- 
gels in his presence. I did it — I did it ; it was all my 
work." 

The girls were evidently affected deeply by the sight 
before them, and by the tones of her voice ; and as she 
repeated again and again her asseverations of their inno- 
cence and her own guilt, they began to comprehend the 
nature of the scene that was transpiring. It pleased God 
to give them- just at this hour, and doubtless through the 
influence of the communication which they were receiv- 
ing, at least a temporary deliverance from the darkness 
and delirium in which they had so long been lost. He 
restored peace and a measure of strength to their minds, 
enabling them to receive and to understand the blessed 
truth that evidence was coming, though from the verge 
of the grave, to deliver them from the wrongs they 
had suffered. They took her extended hands in their 
own ; they knelt upon the floor by her side ; they as- 



A parson's story. 223 

sured her, even in their wretchedness and their ruin, 
that they would forgive her ; and they prayed Heaven 
to grant her forgiveness ere her soul should take its 
departure. 

It was at this juncture that I entered the room. The 
moment Mrs. Flint caught my eye she renewed her prot- 
estations of the innocence of the girls, told me how for 
years she had carried the pangs of remorse in her own 
breast, how often she had desired to do them justice, and 
to seek peace for her own conscience ; but her selfish- 
ness and her pride had always overcome her better reso- 
lutions, and she had witnessed month after month the 
dreadful fruits of her sin, and feared continually that the 
judgments of God would overtake her. Here, on her 
sick-bed, and in view of death, when no other considera- 
tions than those which attended preparation for the grand 
event which was just before her were allowed to have any 
power upon her mind, she had been driven to this last 
and dying confession, which, while it would relieve her 
own mind of the burden under which she was sinking, 
would restore to those unhappy girls the priceless treasure 
of a character which they had lost ; though she believed, 
as I did, that it was too late to hope that the restoration 
of their character would bring them back the treasure of 
reason, which there was too much cause to fear was irre- 
trievably lost. 

What could I add to this revelation, than which noth- 
ing could be more solemn and affecting? Here were all 
the accessaries of a sublime yet painful drama. The 
dying woman, with her sharp, haggard features, her pierc- 
ing, agonized eyes, looking now at the girls, and now up- 
ward as if she would look into the other world, striving 
to read the destiny upon which she was about to enter, 



224 UNDER THE TREES. 

now turning to me with imploring glance, and asking me 
to direct her, even in her extremity, to some way by which 
she might find forgiveness and peace, now seeking to re- 
assure the helpless daughters of sorrow yet kneeling be- 
fore her that God would be their father and their portion, 
saying that she could die with contentment if she could 
believe that her death would be the means of giving back 
to them the life which they had lost. 

In vain was it for me to offer a word of consolation. 
Indeed, there was none to be spoken. I directed her, as 
I would any lost sinner in the hour of calamity, to the 
only refuge, and besought her to seek in the Saviour the 
only source of peace. 

When the girls arose from their knees, and were about 
to leave the house, she begged them to remain, and even 
required from them a promise that they would not leave 
her while she lived. With gentle kindness they began to 
perform the part of nurses around the sick-bed, and with 
unaccustomed ministries they soothed her sufferings, and 
gradually seemed to bring her to the enjoyment of some- 
thing like peace of mind. But this was temporary. Soon 
the paroxysms of anguish came back with redoubled force, 
and in words too strong to be repeated, and such only as 
dying pains extort from consciences ill at ease anticipat- 
ing greater anguish near at hand ; fearful of the present, 
and more fearful still of that which is to come, she cried 
again and again, " It was I that did it — it was I that did 
it ; it was all my work." And so she died. 

IX. 

I took the girls home with me, and embraced this pres- 
ent lucid interval to make an earnest experiment, in the 
faint hope of securing their permanent restoration. Noth- 



A parson's story. 225 

ing had occurred since their derangement which afforded 
such good ground to believe that there might be a basis 
laid for a permanent cure. They could be assured that 
all suspicions formerly resting upon their character were 
now removed, and they would enjoy the universal confi- 
dence and love of those who had been their friends, and 
their mother's friends, in the days of their prosperity and 
joy. I told them that my house was to be their home j 
I gave them their chamber ; I gave them such light work 
as would occupy their minds, and in the cultivation of 
flowers in the garden, in the pursuit of such studies as 
they were always fond of, and in the society of kind and 
genial friends, I sought to surround them with those 
pleasant influences which would cheer and console, and 
gently aid in their perfect recovery. 

Among the many friends who were in the habit of vis- 
iting at my house from the city of New York was a mer- 
chant of large means and extensive business. His wife 
had died a year after their marriage, and he had led a 
single life for five or six years. It was not among the re- 
motest of my suspicions that he should think of finding a 
second wife in my house, and in one of these unfortunate 
yet lovely young ladies. 

But there is no accounting for tastes or sympathies. 
Mr. Whitfield was a man long accustomed to think for 
himself, and not given to asking the opinions of others 
till after his own mind was made up. Then it was too 
late to shake his resolution, whatever the force of the mo- 
tives urged against it. He knew the story of the Bells, 
and that story had first awakened his sympathy, his pity, 
and prepared the way for love. When he broached the 
subject to me, I begged him to dismiss it at once and for- 
ever from his mind. But he respectfully declined, telling 



226 UNDER THE TREES. 

me he had counted the cost, and was prepared for the 
risks. 

Although there had been great improvement in the 
health and appearance of both Sarah and Mary since the 
death of Mrs. Flint, they were still liable to returns of the 
fearful malady ; and Mr. Whitfield had his resolution put 
to the severest test as soon as he ventured upon the ex- 
periment of making known his intentions to Sarah, the 
object of his choice. He had invited her to ride with 
him. They drove out of the village, passing the door of 
the house in which Mrs. Flint had died. Sarah had never 
entered it since that terrible hour when she and her poor 
sister closed the eyes of the wretched woman. The 
memories of that scene, and of all they had passed through 
in the years of their fprmer struggles and trials, came 
rushing upon her mind, and she began to talk wildly, and 
then madly ; and soon she became frantic, and strove to 
leap from the carriage, and would have done so but for 
the main force of her friend and companion, who trembled 
at the brink on which he was standing. 

Still he was not disheartened. He hastened back with 
his charge to my house, and told me of the excitement 
into which Sarah had been thrown, and the danger from 
which she had been rescued. He was deeply affected. 
He was in trouble. " And yet," said he, " in spite of all 
this, I believe that if she were once more in a home of 
her own, and surrounded with the duties and pleasures 
of the household, her mind would become settled, and 
she would be restored to the enjoyment of health and 
reason." 

I assured him that, next to my own children, I desired 
their happiness before all others, but I could not advise 
him to take a step which might make him miserable, 



A PARSON S STORY. 227 

without adding to the enjoyment of her who could not be 
a wife such as he desired unless God should give her 
back the permanent possession of her once cultivated 
and now disordered mind. 

He returned in a week or two, with his purpose un- 
changed. He asked Sarah again to ride with him ; and 
this time she seemed to enjoy the world around her, and 
to enter into the spirit of nature as its beauties met her 
eyes. The birds were happy, and she spoke of their glad- 
ness as she saw and heard them. The fields seemed to 
clap their hands. Sarah was joyful in the midst of a 
world of joy. They rode to Passaic Falls, at Paterson, 
in the State of New Jersey. The deep roar of the waters 
as they approached was a solemn music that subdued 
and stilled her soul. They walked out upon the wide, flat 
rocks through which the river makes its broken plunge, 
and, instead of being terrified, she gloried in the excite- 
ment of the scene. She spoke of the spray as a cloud 
of incense rising from those eternal altars, and ever prais- 
ing Him who sits in the heavens, and listens to the music 
of all his works. They came to the edge of the precipice, 
and Mr. Whitfield pointed out to her the very spot where, 
a few months previously, a bride had fallen from the side 
of her husband, and had been dashed to pieces on the 
rocks below. She looked down with steady nerves, and 
said that it was a fearful fall, and more fearful to him who 
remained when his bride was gone. 

He led her cautiously and by a winding path to the 
bottom of the ravine, whence they could look up to the 
brow of the black jagged rocks, from which the white wa- 
ters were tumbling through the green fringes of stunted 
trees and bushes that clung to the sides of the clefts. 

And here, in the roar of the fall, as she was rejoicing 



228 UNDER THE TREES. 

in the wonderful beauty of the scenes around her, he be- 
gan his declaration. 

" You are not serious, surely," she cried, in mingled fear 
and surprise, as he intimated that he desired her love, 
and would be only too happy to give her his fortune and 
his hand. " You do not know my story, or you could not 
dream of such a proposal." 

" I know it all ; it was that story which first led me to 
think of devoting my life to yours ; and if you will cast 
in your lot with me, you shall find that I will be parent, 
brother, husband, all in one." 

" It is altogether out of the question," she returned. 
" I do not love you ; I do not know that I could love. 
This thought of love is one that I have not known since 
those happy days before the clouds came. You did not 
know that I ever loved ?" 

" Yes, I have heard that one all unworthy of you once 
sought you, and that he fled when the day of your adver- 
sity came. I would come to you in the midst of your 
sorrow, and win you to a home of peace and joy. I have 
the means of surrounding you with all that you can de- 
sire, and my life shall be spent in making yours as happy 
as you ever dreamed of being." 

"But you have not counted the cost; you know not 
what you are proposing ; I am a poor, weak thing ; and 
I have even been told that my sister and I are sometimes 
deranged. I do not know what it is, or why it is, but I 
have strange, dreadful thoughts sometimes ; and these 
have been more frequent and more terrible since the time 
when Mary and I were accused of a crime of which we 
were altogether innocent. You will not be so rash as to 
think of taking such a wild, thoughtless woman as I am 
to your home, even if I could assure you that the affec- 



A parson's story. 229 

tion you promise could be returned in all its sincerity 
and strength." . 

Still he pressed his suit. In the honesty of his heart 
he felt he had now committed himself, and even if he had 
been staggered in his purpose by the serious objections 
she had so rationally raised, and urged with so much 
earnestness, he was bound to go forward. And never 
did the girl appear to him more lovely than when, with 
such delicate appreciation of his motives, and tempted as 
she must be by his proposals, she still resisted his ap- 
peals, and left him an open door to retreat. He renewed 
his entreaties. 

" But there is my sister Mary, who was with me in our 
childhood, the companion of all my sorrows — I will never, 
never leave her." 

" And you shall not leave her. She will go with us to 
our own home, and be my sister as well as yours. Instead 
of losing-a sister, she will find a brother." 

Sarah was deeply affected. It seemed to her that God 
was in this thing, and that the dark clouds which had so 
long hung over her were now clearing away, and a new 
light was breaking upon her path. Yet she could not 
yield to the offers so pressed upon her till she had con- 
sulted her friends, and she finally promised to be governed 
by my advice in the matter. She was calm and cheerful 
as they came home together that evening. I should not 
have suspected that any thing unusual had passed between 
them. But after the sisters had retired for the night, and 
I was left alone with Mr. Whitfield, he told me of the 
events of the day, and begged me to aid him in procuring 
Sarah's consent to their union. He knew well that I had 
already advised him against the proposal ; but now he 
was more than ever infatuated with the conviction that 



230 UNDER THE TREES. 

the restoration of the sisters to the calm pleasures of a 
home they might call their own would be the means of 
getting them health and peace. To all prudential consid- 
erations he turned a deaf ear ; and I was obliged to tell 
him that it was impossible for me to object, if he were 
willing to take the responsibility upon himself. 

With a new and an admiring sense of the ways of divine 
Providence, I looked upon the change that was about to 
take place in the situation of these poor sisters, and said 
to myself seriously, as I thought over the ways by which 
they had been led, is there, indeed, any thing too hard for 
the Lord? Who would have believed that such a door 
of deliverance from poverty and suffering would be open- 
ed .'' Who would have thought that one of these orphans, 
a few months ago wandering in the streets, and raving in 
the wildness of delirium, would now be sought after by a 
man of character and wealth, laying his fortune at her feet, 
and offering to share his home with her sister, so that both 
should be equally the recipients of blessings which Heaven 
is so kindly bestowing? Here was the promise of God 
most strikingly fulfilled : " Leave thy fatherless children 
— I will keep them alive ;" " When my father and my 
mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." 
There had been many long and painful years, when it 
might be feared that these promises had been forgotten. 
So deep had been the extremity of their destitution, and 
so hopeless their condition, I had looked forward to their 
death as the first release they could have from sorrow. 
Such a termination was far more probable than that one 
of them should win the love of a noble-hearted man who 
would take her to himself, and surround her with the 
sweets of social and domestic life. But if all this is, in- 
deed, in store for these orphan sisters, far be it from me 



A parson's story. 231 

to say a word, except to pray God to bless th^ni both, and 
give them a respite from the miseries which have so long 
been their portion. 

During the interval of three months that followed this 
eventful day there was a daily and marked improvement 
in the sisters. The vivacity of childhood, without the lev- 
ity of their wandering years, returned : they were them- 
selves again. And when Sarah at length gave her con- 
sent, and stood up before me to be joined in marriage to 
the man who' had thus nobly called her to be his own, I 
said to him, " I give you Sarah to be your wife, and Mary 
to be your sister." And he replied, " I will be faithful to 
both until death shall separate us." 

If any part of this narrative has had the appearance of 
romance, much more like it is that which is now to be 
recorded. But if I have not already given the assurance, 
it may be well to say here that I am following out the 
events of real life, and there are many now living who 
will read and attest, if needful, the truth of these strange 
facts. 

Among the guests at the marriage of Sarah was a 
younger brother of her husband, his partner in business, 
and with the same bright prospects. He stood up by 
the side of his brother, and Sarah was supported by her 
sister. In less than a month from that time the order 
was changed, and the young Whitfield and Mary stood 
side by side, and plighted their vows in the presence of 
God, and surrounded by a glad and admiring circle of 
friends, who could not conceal their grateful recognition 
of a merciful providence in the marriage of these two sis- 
ters under circumstances of such extraordinary interest. 

A short time afterward I saw them settled in their new 
homes. They lived in adjoining houses in one of the 



232 UNDER THE TREES. 

pleasantest streets of the city, then quite down town, 
where now the march of business has driven out the old 
settlers, desecrated the firesides hallowed by a thousand 
sacred associations, and converted the sanctuary of love 
into temples of Mammon. 

X. 

And here I would be willing to close this record, and 
leave my young friends in the bliss with which at length 
their lives are crowned. 

" It is wonderful," Sarah said to me as I called to see 
her in her beautiful mansion. "It is wonderful. How 
strangely God has led us ; and now we are as happy as we 
have ever been miserable in the years that are past. Do 
you believe that my dear mother knows what we have 
passed through, and what we are enjoying now?" 

I told her I had often indulged the idea that the spir- 
its of the departed were conversant with our spirits — that 
they are indeed ministering spirits to those whom they 
loved while in the flesh, and it was not impossible that 
her mother had followed her in all her eventful and mys- 
terious history. Even now she may be near and rejoic- 
ing that peace and joy had at last visited the hearts of 
her daughters, and out of great tribulation they were al- 
ready brought to happiness they had never dreamed of 

It was a short year after Mary's marriage when the 
birth of a child promised to fill the cup of her thanks- 
giving. Others rejoiced, and yet she did not seem to be 
happy in the prospect, nor when it was laid in her arms 
did she give it more than a melancholy smile of satisfac- 
tion. Instead of fondling it with the yearning tenderness 
of a young mother, she looked on it calmly, but with a 
fixedness of interest that was more full of anxiety than 



A PARSON S STORY. 233 

affection. Days and weeks went by and this moodiness 
increased. She was able now to sit up, and when the 
infant was lying on her knees or in the cradle by her side, 
she would sit by the hour and watch it steadily, without a 
word, but often sighing as if some great sorrow was in 
the future of her child's history, into which she was look- 
ing. Slowly but steadily, and in the lapse of weeks and 
months, she sank into melancholy gloom. No art of 
medicine, no kind devotion of a faithful husband, no 
sweet ministries of a large and loving circle of friends 
could raise her up, or dispel the cloud that gathered over 
her spirit. The child was removed from her sight, but it 
was all the same to her. She never asked for it, seemed 
never to think of it unless it were in her sight. Foreign 
travel was proposed, and Mr. Whitfield earnestly strove 
to prevail on her to go with him abroad. But to all 
such invitations she was indifferent. She must have 
been carried by force, or she would never have been 
taken from the room where in profound reverie she sat 
day after day, without interest in the world around her, 
or even in those nearest to her fireside. 

Sarah was not careless for her sister's state, but alas, 
by that strange fatality which had hitherto followed them 
both, making them one in suffering as they were also one 
in the few joys that were theirs in life, she too began to 
show signs of returning madness. What was the secret 
principle thus linking their destinies? In childhood 
they had been as one in love and innocence. In youth 
they had been crushed, together and by the same blow. 
In womanhood they had both found loving hearts, fra- 
ternal hearts, that gave them a shelter, a home, and all 
the sympathies of a noble conjugal affection. And now, 
when the great struggle of life was past, and they were in 



234 



UNDER THE TREES. 



the midst of joys that even in the dreams of childhood they 
had never thought of, the darkness is coming on again, 
and other hearts besides their own are to be shrouded in 
the approaching gloom. 

Mary's child died in its first year, Mary did not shed 
a tear. It was no more to her than the child of a 
stranger. She was now silent and sullen. She never 
complained, but it was gradually apparent that disease 
was making progress. She took to her bed, and a slow 
fever wore out her life. She died three months after her 
child, and less than two years after her marriage. 

Sarah's malady had a widely different development. 
Naturally more excitable than her sister, she had in 
former days been more wild and gay in the seasons of 
their derangement. Now she was wilder than ever. 
She became uncontrollable by the friends who surround- 
ed her. There was no asylum into which she could be 
placed : the insane at that time were confined only 
among paupers or criminals, or in hospitals under cir- 
cumstances the most unfavorable to their recovery. Her 
faithful husband, as tender in his affection and devoted 
as when he first won her, sought to restrain her by gen- 
tle assiduity, striving to conceal from others, when he 
could no longer hide from his own mind, the terrible 
fact that she was mad. But her madness wore a humor- 
ous rather than a mischievous type for some months. 
She would enter the parlor while he was on his knees 
conducting the devotions of the household, and leap on 
his back as if in the exuberance of childish spirits, and 
frolic there, laughing while his heart was breaking. They 
put a strait-waistcoat upon her, but she would contrive to 
get it off and throw it through the window, and threaten 
to leap out herself if it were ever put on her again. 



A parson's story. 235 

The hospital in Broadway at the head of Fearl Street 
was then new, and after long hesitation, and acting un- 
der the advice of the best physicians, Mr. Whitfield was 
at last prevailed upon to consent to her removal there. 
He obtained the most desirable apartment, on the south- 
east corner, in one of the upper stories ; and having 
furnished it with every appliance for her safety and 
comfort, he consigned her to the medical men of that 
institution when it was no longer possible for him to 
keep her in any comfort at home. But he could not rest 
in his own mansion while the wife of his bosom, whom 
he so tenderly loved, was in a public hospital, alone and 
crazed. Night after night he walked the street in front 
of the building in which she was confined, looking up at 
the window in her narrow chamber, sometimes fancying 
that he saw her struggling to force her way through, and 
expecting to see her plunging headlong from that fearful 
height. By degrees her strength gave way ; and when 
she was no longer able to be violent in her paroxysms of 
madness, he had the melancholy satisfaction of again 
taking her to his own house. Directly over his own 
bed-chamber he had an apartment prepared for her, and 
thither she was conveyed, and watched by suitable at- 
tendants. When by the silence of her chamber he knew 
that she was asleep, he would often steal up from his own 
room, and sitting down in a large easy chair near the 
bed, he would look upon the wreck of his lovely bride, 
weeping over the change, and praying that even now, in 
her hopeless and helpless state, the power of God might 
be revealed for relief and restoration. The first sweet 
year of their union would then come to his memory, 
when something whispered to him of his rashness in 
linking himself to one whose mind was shattered, what- 



236 UNDER THE TREES. 

ever might be her virtues and her charms ; and he 
thanked God that it had been his privilege, even for 
that brief period, to make her a home, and fill her heart 
with peace and joy. 

One night he w^as sitting there, and musing, perhaps 
somewhat encouraged by having been told that through 
the day she had been calmer, and at intervals apparently 
rational. Now she was sleeping, more sweetly than he 
had known her in many months. And as he leaned his 
head back in the chair, wearied with long and anxious 
waking, he fell asleep. When he awoke, his wife was 
sitting on his knees ; her arms were around his neck. 
She pressed her lips to his, and said to him, " My dear, 
dear husband." It was the first recognition of many 
long and awful months. He pressed her warmly, convul- 
sively to his heart. 

"Sing to me," she said; "sing to me one of those Sab- 
bath-evening songs." 

" I can not sing, dearest," he replied ; " it is enough 
that you are mine again, and here, here on my breast, 
dearest, sweetest wife." Her head fell on his shoulder, 
and he poured into her ear the glowing words of his love. 

" Oh, these months of wretchedness, when you could 
not know that I loved you, and longed to bless you, dear- 
est, as I will, if God will spare you, as he has restored you 
to my arms. Kiss me again, sweet wife." 

She did not speak. " Kiss me, love." Her head still 
rested on his shoulder. He raised her up to press his 
lips to hers. She was dead. 



XXI. 

PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 

A WOMAN has just gone, and I will tell you why she 
came. She was past middle age, not very comely, her 
voice sharp, clear, and decided. She stood, and was be- 
ginning to speak, when I rose and asked her to be seated. 
She sat down and was quiet for a moment. Presently 
she began : 

" I have come to you with a message from the Lord." 

" Ah, and did you bring a letter of introduction ?" 

" What did you ask ?" 

" I asked if you brought your credentials with you : any 
token by which I may be assured that you are authorized 
to speak to me in the name of the Lord. You are a per- 
fect stranger to me, and there is nothing (pardon me) in 
your appearance to indicate the divinity of your mission; 
so that, before I hear your message, I ask for your author- 
ity. If you have brought no testimonials, give me a sign." 

"A sign ! What sign do you ask ?" 

"Any sign — a miracle or a wonder — that shall convince 
me of your supernatural endowment to make known to 
me the mind of the Lord. Here is a letter lying before 
me undirected. I was on the point of directing it when 
you came in ; now tell me to whom it is to be addressed, 
and I will know that you have meat to eat that I know 
not of." 

" I don't pretend to have any such inspiration as that ; 



238 UNDER THE TREES. 

but I have studied the prophecies, and have been taught 
of God to know who the Two Witnesses are that are 
spoken of in the Revelation, and I have come to make 
it known to you, and you must teach it to the Church. 
The Two Witnesses are — " 

" Stop, if you please, madam; I do not care about hear- 
ing what you have to say ; I have forgotten more than 
you know about the Two Witnesses — " 

" But you must hear me, you shall hear me, and the 
whole Church is bound to hear me. I have been pray- 
ing and reading and thinking about these things twen- 
ty years, and it has all been opened to me now, so that 
the Church is no longer to be in any doubt about them. 
Commentators have differed : scarcely any two of theni 
think alike ; but it is all plain now. The Two Witnesses 
are — " 

" I tell you again, madam, I will not listen to you unless 
you give me a sign. You are either deranged or you are 
divinely inspired to reveal the Word of God. It needs 
no revelation to me. All that is needful for my instruc- 
tion and comfort and hope is as plain to me as the nose 
(pardon me again) on your face ; and what things I do 
not understand I leave to Him who gave them to make 
them plain in His own good time and way, if He would 
have me to understand them." 

" Certainly ; and He has sent me to tell you who the 
Two Witnesses are, and I have come to tell you that they 
are—" 

" And I tell you, madam, that I am not going to hear 
you. I know who the Two Witnesses are as well as you 
do, and do not care to be instructed on the subject." 

" Well, now, tell me. I'll hear what you have to say. 
I don't believe you have the least idea who the Two Wit- 



PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 239 

nesses are, and you never will know unless I tell you. 
Come now, who are they ?'.' 

"Why, if you know who they are, and I don't, what is 
the use of my trying to teach you. It would be better for 
us both to go about our own work, and let the Two Wit- 
nesses alone." 

She now rose, and with fierce invective denounced me 
as slow of heart and unwilling to hear the truth ; and as 
I was resuming the pen — the sceptre here — she withdrew. 
She is one of several demented women who go about per- 
secuting.the Church, and annoying those unfortunate men 
who have means of reaching the public ear. They ought 
to be tenderly cared for by their friends, and detained 
from these peripatetic teachings. 

VISIONS AND OTHER NOVELTIES. 

One of the most curious chapters in philosophy might 
be written by any one who had the facts in regard to the 
delusions of the human mind on religious questions. 

A few days ago I received a letter of which the follow- 
ing is a passage : 

" Now is the time for the Dark Ages to pass away. He who 
openeth, and no man shutteth, and shutteth, and no man openeth, is 
about to shut the door of the Dark Ages and open the door to his 
Kingdom of Light. His name shall be known as God alone, as he 
has foretold by all his prophets. Come and see me. It is very easy 
to be great like the Almighty, but it is very hard to be humble like 
Jesus. Do gladden his heart by letting him see one humble man 
in these worldly, self-seeking days. I have been humbled to the dust, 
and you can bear to talk with me, for I assure you for some years past, 
I have received visions from God revealing these wondrous truths. If 
it is God's will, you must come. My present address is," etc. 

I was very busy, but there was something in the letter 
which made me think that I might do wrong if " I were 



240 UNDER THE TREES. 

not obedient to the heavenly vision." In the parlor of one 
of the most fashionable houses in this city I was received 
by a genteel and very ladylike woman, who said, in very 
gentle words — 

" I knew you would come ; the Lord made it known 
to me that you would, and I have a message to you. He 
has appeared to me in the person of a little child, whose 
mouth was opened to say the most wonderful things, and 
it was given to me to know that they came dir«ectly from 
the Lord, who — " 

She had not as yet given me the chance of a word, and 
probably did not care whether I spoke or not, as she evi- 
dently proposed a conversation in which she was to do 
all the talking. That is the case generally with people 
who have a religious maggot in their brain, and come to 
other people for aid and comfort. But when she had run 
on until an opening for a word appeared, I said — 

" You tell me that you have a message from the Lord 
to me ; what proof do you propose to give me that he is 
speaking to me through you ?" 

" Oh, I know he does ; I feel it and see it ; and you 
would not doubt it for a moment if you would hear what 
this dear child has said to me, and what she never could 
have dreamed of if it had not been given her of the 
Lord." 

" Pardon me, madam, I have had many men and women 
coming to me with revelations, and I invariably ask them 
for a sign — something to signify to me that they are ac- 
credited from the court of heaven. If a strange lady 
should come to me and tell me that the Queen of England 
had sent her to me with a message of great importance, I 
should ask her for credentials — some letter or other token 
by which she could make me certain that the queen had 



PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 24I 

deputed this unknown lady to be her representative. In 
old times monarchs intrusted a seal ring to the keeping 
of a secret messenger, that it might be evidence of the 
authority by which he Was to speak ; or some, password 
which might be understood between the king and his ab- 
sent general, and when that was mentioned, the claim of 
the messenger was recognized. God gave his prophets 
and apostles power by which they wrought signs and 
wonders, and men knew that such could come only from 
him who was King over all. What can you do ?" 

The good woman was not in the least disconcerted by 
this address, and when I closed with the direct personal 
inquiry as to her ability to prove her mission from heaven, 
she was as quietly ready to begin again as if I had mere- 
ly spoken of the state of the weather. Indeed, all she 
wanted was a chance to speak. What a wonderful safe- 
ty-valve and source of pleasure is the gift and chance to 
talk ! Especially to people who have but one idea. Only 
one class of people talk more than those who have only 
one idea, and that is the class who have no idea at all. 
Put a man on a hobby, and he rides forever without stop- 
ping. Let him become absorbed with one idea, and he 
can talk without ceasing till the ears of the hearers are 
heavy ; he is as fresh as the morning, when they are 
ready to die of his discourse. This is peculiarly true 
when a man imagines he has had a new religious experi- 
ence or revelation. Having left all other doctrines and 
precepts of the Word of God, as of very little account 
compared with his pet theory, he spends his time in drill- 
ing other people into his views. I am the hapless victim 
of numberless male and female revelators, who assure me 
that if I only listen to them they will show me the truth, 
and then I can write about it and do good to thousands, 

Q 



242 UNDER THE TREES. 

Ah ! how often have I, in a moment of weakness, yielded 
to the flattering suggestion, and permitted the bore to 
have the use of my ear! Talk — a stream of talk — 
shallow, of course, for only stilF waters run deep ; that 
no barrier can arrest, flows on, until that divine virtue, 
patience, ceases to rule, and I have to beg, with painful 
countenance, to be excused from further instructions. 
This can be done when the orator is a prophet. But 
when it is a prophetess, escape is more difficult. 

The lady in the parlor was fluent, voluble, and sin- 
cere. She had one idea, and that was absurd. She could 
not speak two minutes without self-contradiction twice. 
And when I put the contradictions before her, she was 
just as well pleased as if I had assented, and rushed on 
with the unending, overwhelming chatter. Doubtless the 
gift of speech is good — but, oh, how much more good 
when sense is given with it ! 

At last I was obliged to interrupt my fair teacher by 
saying that I could not hear her message without some 
evidence that it was from heaven, and, as I had several 
little matters to attend to, she must pardon me for saying 
" Good-afternoon." 

The year 1842 was marked by the sudden rise, and 
1843 by the fall of the Millerites, a sect who had been 
deluded with the notion that the Lord Jesus Christ would 
come in visible person on a certain day in the latter ye^r 
to receive his saints, to destroy his enemies, and to estab- 
lish his throne on the earth. They took their name from 
William Miller, a Baptist minister in the northern part of 
this state, who had studied the prophecies until he knew 
nothing about them, and by a process in arithmetic pecul- 
iar to himself had hit upon the year when the final catas- 
trophe was to occur, to the confusion of the wicked and 



PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 243 

the glorification of all who were found waiting for the 
coming of the Lord. It is wonderful with what avidity 
this delusion was received. Its dupes numbered thou- 
sands. They were not of the more intelligent classes — 
indeed, very few educated people were led astray — but 
of serious-minded and unlettered multitudes who com- 
posed the great mass of the community at that time. 
The sudden converts to Millerism were many. One rea- 
son that operated rapidly upon this sort of people was 
the shortness of time allowed them to make up their 
minds. They were told that the end was at hand. First 
the year was fixed ; then the month and the day. And 
to make a sure thing of it, they thought the safest course 
was to believe, and if the crash came at the appointed time 
they would be all right, and if it did not they would be 
no worse off than before on account of their faith in the 
figures of Miller. And I am inclined to think that Mil- 
ler's name, having an apparent analogy to Millenarianism, 
helped to faith in his calculations. Thousands of excel- 
lent Christian men, scholars, divines — some of them men 
of wide repute for learning and religion — are Millenari- 
ans ; believing in the future personal reign of Jesus Christ 
upon the earth, and in his speedy coming to set up his 
throne. But they do not set the time. Some writers of 
this school have found in the figures of the Prophet Dan- 
iel a starting-point and a period, and have therefore vent- 
ured to fix the year when the King might be expected to 
appear in his glory ; but in all such cases the march of 
time has compelled them to find errors in their calcula- 
tions by which the great event was necessarily postponed. 
But in the Millerite year the delusion took the form of 
an epidemic or a panic. The leaders of the sect peram- 
bulated the country with immense tents in which to hold 



244 UNDER THE TREES. 

public meetings, and these were crowded for days and 
nights in succession by excited congregations, whose 
prayers and songs and cries bordered on the delirious. 
Many became deranged. Lunatic asylums reported this 
delusion as the cause of insanity in many cases. 

One night, very late, a man came to me with a message 
from God that I must believe in the speedy Advent, and 
teach it to the people. He would not be put off with the 
excuse that it was nearly midnight, and that I could not 
listen to his discourse at such an unseasonable hour. He 
said that nothing was so important as the revelation he had 
come to make, and that it was high time I heard it. Then 
he began with his figures. He added, subtracted, and di- 
vided, piled up dates from history and prophecy, told of 
the " abomination of desolation" that was to be set up and 
that was set up, and started off from that date and calcu- 
lated the downfall of the Roman Empire and the death 
of Napoleon, and brought out 1843 as neatly as the most 
accurate mathematician could desire. Out of breath at 
the end of his computation, and triumphing in the result, 
he demanded my assent to his conclusion. 

I looked up at him and quietly asked, " And what do 
you make of the two sticks ?" 

" Sticks — what sticks ?" he said. 

" Well, sir," I replied, " if you are an expositor of the 
prophecies and do not know the two sticks of which the 
prophet speaks, you must excuse me from receiving any 
messages from you as coming from heaven." He soon 
left me to my fate. 

Some of the Millerite societies were so sure the end 
was at hand that they put their individual possessions, 
which were usually very slender, into joint, stock, in imi- 
tation of the early Christians, who had " all things com- 



PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 245 

mon." In Oneida County, New York, a well-to-do farmer, 
being converted to their doctrine, came to join their meet- 
ing, and, on being told of this rule, said he would think 
of it a while, and pray over it. He went away sorrowful, 
for he was very rich. At the next meeting he appeared, 
and, upon being called upon for his answer, he said he 
had received a message from heaven, and was prepared 
to obey. " While engaged in prayer for divine direction," 
said he, " I have had one passage of the Bible so power- 
fully impressed upon my mind that I know it is from God, 
and I shall do as I am commanded." 

The brethren and sisters were in breathless expecta- 
tion of the tremendous sacrifice he was about to make. 
The elder bade him be of good courage, and declare the 
message. And the rich man said — 

" The passage which came to my mind, and which I 
am resolved to obey, was in these words — ' Occupy till 
I come.' " 

When the appointed time arrived, thousands of them 
were ready as far as their white raiment could be re- 
garded as readiness for such an event. So purely car- 
nal and earthly were all their views of this great spirit- 
ual change, that they made linen garments called " ascen- 
sion robes," with which they arrayed themselves. Some 
of them, in cities, took their seats upon the edges of the 
house-tops. Others, in the country, ascended hills or 
climbed into trees, and sat as patiently as possible, while 
their locks were wet with the dews of the night. They 
thought they would see the Lord descending from the 
sky, and that they would rise to meet him in the air. It 
was easy to believe that a mistake of a day, or even of a 
month, had been made in reckoning thousands of years, 
and many therefore thought the advent was still at hand, 



246 UNDER THE TREES. 

though they had not hit upon the identical day. Others 
gave up to wild despair. Many were made faithless in 
Scripture when they found they had been duped by false 
teachers. I never heard that any were made more char- 
itable, more patient, humble Christians. The prominent 
trait of character in the Millerites was their censorious 
and denunciatory spirit toward those who would not 
adopt their arithmetic. But their end came when they 
thought the world was coming to an end. The awful 
day came. The sun rose, shone as usual, and set just as 
it was in the habit of doing. And then the moon made 
its quiet tour among the -stars, and died away in the light 
of another day. And all things went on as from the be- 
ginning. 

Two or three other dates were fixed upon, and previous 
errors of calculation were explained, but the end would 
not come any way they could fix it. Miller subsided into 
his farm. Elder Himes, who had been the fidus Achates 
of Miller, and had blown the trumpets in advance of the 
coming King, blew on, but, as before, it was all sound and 
fury, signifying nothing. And now, after the lapse of a 
quarter of a century, there is here and there only a ves- 
tige remaining of a faith that took possession of thousands, 
and had its disciples in almost every city and village and 
rural parish of the Northern, Eastern, and Middle States. 

In the month of January, 1854, I found a miserable, 
half-starved colony of this sect in the Holy Land. Their 
delusion had received the additional article of faith that 
the Lord would set up his kingdom in Palestine, and 
reign again in the city of the Great King. They had 
gathered what earthly possessions they had, and finding 
their way across the ocean and through the Mediterranean 
Sea, had landed at the ancient Joppa, where dwelt, once 



PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 247 

on a time, that Simon the Tanner to whom Cornelius 
sent his messengers. Near this city they had bought a 
Uttle land, which cost them but a trifle ; they had reared 
cottages, and were there waiting. Poverty came, but the 
Lord did not. Loneliness, homesickness, disease, but no 
signs of the Healer and Saviour. Some of them lived to 
be brought away by the hand of charity, and some of 
them died there, and their bodies will rest in the grave 
until the resurrection, when they shall be raised up, let us 
hope, in glory. 

But it is no false report that the Lord is coming. Not 
in a coach and four, and with soldier guards attending. 
I do not look for such an appearing. But I see the signs 
of his advent, as when I stood on the Rigi in the early 
morn and saw the eastern mountain-tops tipped with fire 
as the king of day in his chariot of glory was riding up 
the steeps. I knew he was at hand. And he came. 
Peak after peak was on fire, and the ice plains " caught 
the flying joy." The valleys glowed with tte sunbeams 
and the world rejoiced in the coming of the king. It was 
all gloomy when I came out of my lodgings, but it was all 
glory now. And just so — yes, just so — do I see the signs 
of the coming of the Sun of Righteousness, the advent of 
the Son of Man. Brighter than the eastern sky when the 
sun is there, is the promise of that reign of peace and joy 
which is sure to come, when the chains of superstition and 
error and vice are stricken from the soul of humanity, and 
the race rejoices in the liberty of those whom Christ the 
Lord enlightens and makes free. 

Professor George Bush was a man of wide reputation 
in his lifetime, though he has signally dropped out of the* 
world's memory. He was born at Norwich, Vermont, in 
1796, graduated at Dartmouth in 18 18, studied theology 



240 UNDER THE TREES. 

at Princeton, and, entering the Presbyterian ministry, 
went out as a missionary preacher to Indiana. With 
tastes for scholastic studies rather than the pulpit, he 
tinished his Western ministry in four years, returned to 
the East, and devoted himself to Biblical science. Becom- 
ing a thorough Hebrew scholar, he was elected in 183 1 to 
the professorship of that language in the University in 
this city. His duties there must have been nominal, and 
his income the same, for he was in great straits for means 
of support, living in the midst of his books, and picking 
up what he could by contributions to the press. He had 
accumulated a vast store of ancient volumes, to which 
the shelves of his study were inadequate, and they cov- 
ered the tables and chairs, and lay around in heaps on 
the floor. It was hard to find a seat, and harder to get 
about in his narrow quarters. He was the personification 
of a book-worm. Prematurely aged and wrinkled, poring 
with spectacles of large power over his misty and antique 
volumes, spending his days and nights in a dimly lighted 
and ill-ventilated apartment, which was rarely cleansed 
of its dust, he was the representation of the ideal Rosicru- 
cian searching for wisdom. Social when in company, 
genial and good-tempered, patient under contradiction, 
and tolerant beyond the toleration of greater men, he was 
a pleasant neighbor, with whom I had much intercourse. 
He had already published his " Life of Mohammed," and 
a " Treatise on the Millennium," which he held to have 
passed by long ago, and a Hebrew Grammar, and a big 
volume of " Scripture Illustrations." Then he started a 
periodical which he called the " Hierophant," in which 
'the types, symbols, etc., of the Bible were interpreted in 
his way; and then came his "Anastasis" in 1844, in which 
he brought out an original notion of the resurrection 



PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 249 

which nobody understood, and I never heard of but one 
man who professed to adojDt it. It is not likely that his 
disciples ever reached the number of two. 

This publication separated him in a large measure from 
the orthodox community, and shook confidence in the 
soundness of his religious opinions, essential to the cir- 
culation of his " Commentaries on the Scriptures," which 
he had issued in successive volumes. 

As early as the year 1844 he became bewildered by 
the phenomenal representations of animal magnetism and 
mesmerism, and soon afterward he very naturally wan- 
dered into the faith of Swedenborg, who may be called 
the father of technical spiritualism. One hundred years 
ago this Swedish philosopher professed to be in daily 
converse with dej^arted spirits, and a tradition says that 
he predicted a general reception of his curious doctrines 
in eighty years after his death, wh'ich would be 1851. 
Professor Bush was almost every day in my study, and 
with great simplicity spoke of his wild beliefs, especially 
of the wonders of mesmerism. He said that he could 
read the character of a person he had never seen by pass- 
ing his hand over his manuscript. His explanation was 
this : " You see there are spheres evolving from the mind 
of every living person, and these spheres roll also from 
the record of the mind as a manuscript ; and when I pass 
my hand over the writing, my spheres come into harmony 
with the other person's spheres, and I thus become ac- 
quainted with him ; you understand." " It is just as clear 
as mud," I assured him. And he marveled at my little 
faith. Months passed by after his adoption of the Swe- 
denborgian delusion, and he made a public profession of 
it in a course of lectures in this city. He then wrote with 
his own hand the following notice, which was published : 



250 UNDER THE TREES. 

" Professor Bush is now delivering a course of Sabbath-evening 
lectures in this city on 'The Future Life, as disclosed by Sweden- 
borg.' His audiences have been large and respectable, attracted 
probably in great measure by the novelty of the subject as viewed in 
such connection, and by the boldness and emphasis of tone in which 
the Professor announces his faith in the revelations of the Swedish 
seer. His first lecture, we learn, was devoted to a general view of 
the evidences which he considered as sustaining his divine mission, 
drawn principally from his representations of heaven and hell, which 
he makes to be the ultimate realization of certain moral states of the 
soul, determined by the influence of the ruling love for good or evil. 
The second was announced in the daily papers as offering proof that 
' all angels are human spirits,' in which, we understand, he fully took 
the ground that the existence of a superior race of beings to man is 
not only unscriptural but impossible, inasmuch as creation in the 
image and likeness of God is affirmed of man, and the highest an- 
gel can not be any thing more. Men and angels are the same race 
of beings in different stages of existence. The third announced a 
somewhat singular subject for pulpit discussion, to wit, ' The Relation 
of Mesmerism in its Higher Phenomena to the Doctrines of Sweden- 
borg.' The lecturer asserted that Swedenborg's psychological state 
was altogether of a higher order than that produced by mesmerism, 
and that the belief of his followers was wholly independent of the 
truth or falsehood of the alleged mesmeric developments. The mode 
in which he brought the two things into connection was this ; In the 
mesmeric state the spirit predominates, for the time being, over the 
body. The bodily sensations are suspended while the soul is awake 
and active, though mysteriously influenced by the operator. Its state 
therefore approximates to the state of a spirit dislodged from the 
body. A new condition is developed, especially as far as the laws of 
mental intercourse are concerned. This lays the foundation for a 
comparison of the phenomena displayed with the professed disclos- 
ures of Swedenborg relative to the facts and laws of spiritual com- 
munication in the other life. The result Professor Bush undertook to 
show to be such a striking coincidence as to force upon the mind the 
conviction that if mesmerism is true, Swedenborgianism is true, for the 
revelations of both showed that they belonged to the same great sys- 
tem of spiritual manifestations. This he held to be the more remark- 
able as Swedenborg died ten years before Mesmer was heard of 
From the relation in which Professor Bush has hitherto stood to the 



PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 25 1 

Christian community, we have deemed it our duty to make our read- 
ers acquainted with his present position. We believe he makes no 
reserve himself of the fact that he has come to entertain a full con- 
viction of the truth and authority of Swedenborg's mission. This 
might perhaps have beeii anticipated from the tenor of his recent 
publications on the Resurrection and its kindred subjects. We are 
ready to give him credit for sincerity and honesty in his convictions " 
[and the editor added, " however much we may regret that a man of 
his erudition should thus make shipwreck of the faith, and plunge 
headlong into the abyss of error "]. 

He became the leading writer and teacher of the sect; 
went to Rochester, and died there. It was in Professor 
Bush's room that I met Andrew Jackson Davis shortly 
after he began to talk spiritualism — an ignorant young 
man of talents, who has since become an apostle of spir- 
itualism, and the source of larger books with nothing in 
them than any other man of the age. At the house of 
the President of the United States I was present when 
the disquisitions of Davis and some pretended communi- 
cations from dead statesmen were under discussion. The 
volumes were produced and passages read, while the 
question was seriously asked, " What is all this but the 
merest platitude, of which a living sensible author would 
be ashamed ?" 

Hon. Waddy Thompson, United States Minister to Mex- 
ico, a very prominent Southern politician, was in Wash- 
ington at that time, and I met him at Gadsby's Hotel. 
He said to me, " You will be pleased to learn that I have 
been led from the utter darkness of atheism to believe in 
spiritual religion, and all by the influence of spirit rap- 
pings." He then informed me of the specific revelations 
that had been made to him. The Rochester Fox women 
were then giving lessons in spiritualism in Washington, 
and many public men were converted to their school. 
Mr. Thompson said : 



252 UNDER THE TREES. 

" I knew a man who had killed his friend in a duel, 
and was afterward afraid to sleep in a room alone. He 
finally died. I called for him when the rappings were 
going on, and very soon I heard a clawing and scratching 
(rising and putting his hands against the wall, he scratch- 
ed down), as if a wild beast were clawing a bar of iron." 
This he gave me as evidence that the man was actually 
in the midst of torment for his awful crime. 

Professor Bush would not let me go with him to any 
of the circles where the mesmeric experiments were to be 
seen, for he held that so obstinate an unbeliever would 
interfere with their success. His view was that the con- 
sent of the will of all present was essential. Why of 
those present only, he never explained. But when the 
Fox women came here from Rochester, they proved to be 
such efficient manipulators that faith was not required to 
make miracles. They could bring the spirits into con- 
versation with any body for a dollar. 

I spent an evening with one of them, and had the best 
possible opportunity of testing for myself the spirituality 
of the conversation. I was directed by Miss Fox to write 
five or six names of departed friends, and to touch each 
name, saying, " Is this one present ?" I had no difficulty 
in having the assenting rap made at any name I pleased 
— for in this and several other trials, when it was required 
that I should write and ask " Is it this ?" if I allowed my 
voice to tremble a little, or to be specially firm in utter- 
ance, the rap was sure to come. Paper and pencil were 
put on the floor under the table, but I was not allowed to 
look under ; and a scrawl was found upon the paper, 
which might have been written by the toes or smuggled 
there. Fifty experiments were performed, none of which 
were satisfactory, and the young woman expressed her re- 



PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 253 

gret at the total failure of the evening. I was convinced 
that the whole affair was a mixture of delusion and im- 
posture. 

There are some facts at present inexplicable to unbe- 
lievers, as there are in the feats of necromancers or deal- 
ers with the dead. And some of the simplest tricks of 
jugglers are beyond the reach of ordinary ingenuity. 
There is also an unseen force of mind on mind, the laws 
of which are not yet understood. And the subtle power 
to which we have given the name of magnetism has its 
influence over material objects and living bodies in a 
way that we have not yet discovered. But since the 
world was made, the soul of no dead man has made signs 
to a live one of what is going on in the world of spirits ; 
and apart from what we know of the spirit world from the 
book of Revelation, the veil is unbroken, and beyond it all 
is mystery. Bodily senses are not the media of spiritual 
communications ; and between the living and the dead a 
great gulf is fixed. 

Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher made a book on the pre-ex- 
istence of the human soul. I can not state the doctrine, 
but it was the ancient Eastern tenet of the life of the soul 
in a state of being JDrior to its union with the human body. 
I never saw a living man who believed the doctrine, though 
the book has been before the world some twenty years. 
And the nearest that I ever came to seeing a 4ead man 
who had believed it was in Syria, in Mount Lebanon, I 
was admitted into the sacred tomb of a man reputed to 
have been wise, who had been buried a thousand or two 
years ago, and who had been a believer in the doctrine 
of Dr. Beecher's book. The author and this old Pytha- 
gorean philosopher are the only two men whom I was 
ever near who held to the transmigration of souls. 



254 UNDER THE TREES. 

And other men have spent their strength for naught in 
attempts to make truth more simple, and have succeeded 
only in leaving it as they found it, if they did not darken 
it by their words without knowledge. A very eminent 
divine of the Presbyterian Church, a professor of meta- 
physics, and who knew almost every thing else better 
than he did metaphysics, made a book to explain the 
" existence of evil under the government of a benevolent 
God." He brought it to me in manuscript, and I en- 
dured the hearing of tedious pages and chapters long 
drawn out. I assured him candidly that he had not 
thrown one ray of light on the subject, and his book 
would do nobody any good. But he printed it, and then 
begged me to read the whole of it. Incredible as the 
statement may appear, I did. Again he came to know 
the effect, and I told him frankly that " if I knew any thing 
about the subject before reading his book, I was now 
helplessly in the fog." 

"The trouble is," said he, "you have not a metaphys- 
ical mind." 

" Very true," I answered ; " but if I have the average or 
ordinary intelligence of the human family, and you have 
made a book that I positively can not make head or tail 
of, what good will it do ?" 

His book was published and reviewed (I doubt much 
if the critics read it), and to this day I do not know of 
another man who went through as I did, with the hero- 
ism of a martyr, that mysterious and muddy volume, that 
was to make all things clear, even the deep things of 
God. 

A rural clergyman, quite innocent of the ways of the 
trade, brought to me a huge manuscript, " The Revelation 
of St. John Revealed." He had discovered the full mean- 



PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 255 

ing of the mysteries of the Apocalypse, and if he could 
find a publisher who would print his work, that wonder- 
ful portion of sacred writing, so long baffling the critics 
and commentators, would be as simple as the songs of 
Zion. Would I put him in the way of making the ac- 
quaintance of a publisher who would bring out this im- 
portant volume? I was frank, and warned him that he 
was on a vain errand ; he could not get a publisher in 
New York to look into his book, and I did not believe 
he would do any good by printing it. But he was not 
discouraged ; all he wanted was to get into print. 

" Well," said I, at last, " you take the book to any pub- 
lisher you please, and tell him from me that if he will 
publish the work in good style, you will bring the first 
copy to me, and I will read it, and if it enable me to un- 
derstand the book of Revelation, I will pay the bill for 
the publication of the whole edition." The good man 
went away, and I have never heard of him or his book 
from that hour. 

Another popular preacher came to me with an immense 
manuscript. Fearful to relate, it was an epic poem in 
ten books, of the size of Milton's " Paradise Lost." And 
thus the poet pastor spoke : 

"I have written a poem. It has been the labor of the 
last twenty years. I have obeyed the injunction of Hor- 
ace in his " Ars Poetica," and have written it over from 
beginning to end nine times, and intend to write it again 
after having submitted it to Professor Wilson, of Edin- 
burgh, Bryant, Longfellow, and yourself (!). When will it 
be convenient for you to hear me read it, or would you 
prefer to take the work and peruse it in your study ?" 

To whom I : " Have you reflected upon the magnitude 
of the undertaking — an epic poem ? But one has been a 



256 UNDER THE TREES. 

success in the English language ; and he must be bold 
who offers to make the next." 

" I am aware of it," he replied. " Only one epic poet 
can be in any age ; there has none appeared in ours, and 
it remains to be seen if I am not the man." 

I made answer : " You may be the poet of the century, 
but as I shall have to sit in judgment upon your work 
after it appears, you will perceive that my judgment will 
be biased by reading it now, and you must excuse me 
from the service to which your partiality has invited me." 

His poem was handsomely published, but no man has 
confessed that he read it. It died and made no sign. 

It was on the edge of the evening, when I was told that 
a woman at the door wished to speak with me. A plain- 
ly dressed person she was, and evidently of the Irish ele- 
ment, sober and very civil spoken. She began at once 
with her errand, and with less of an introduction than is 
common with the men or women of her countr}^, she said : 

" Please your reverence, and I want to be turned." 

" I do not understand you. What do you say you 
want ?" 

" And I w^ant to be turned !" Still assuring her that I 
did not get hold of her meaning, and that she must be 
more explicit in her request, or I should not be able to do 
any thing for her, she made another and vigorous attempt 
to make me understand what she was seeking, and this 
time she was completely successful. She said : 

" I am a Catholic, sir, and I want to be turned into a 
Protestant, sir ; and I was told your reverence was one 
of them that turns the Catholics into Protestants, and I 
come to get myself turned, sir." 

The simple earnestness with which the woman stated 
her case divested it of the ludicrous, which it wears to 



PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 257 

one who hears the story told, and can not see, as I 
did, that the poor woman had come for a purpose which 
she now frankly stated ; and when I said to her, " Why 
do you want to change your rehgion and become a Prot- 
estant ?" she was ready with a reason, which she gave 
with great freedom, and I presume with perfect candor 
and trutlifulness. 

"My husband is a Protestant, your reverence, and I 
am a CathoHc, and we fight a great deal about it — we Can 
never agree at all, at all ; and I just thought if I could be 
turned into a Protestant too, that then we would be both 
one way of thinkin' like, and we would have nothing to 
fight about at all, at all ; and would your reverence be so 
good as just to turn me into a Protestant, and I'll bless 
you the longest day I live." 

Finding that she was really and truly set upon making 
a change of base and taking a new departure, I sought, 
in simple words and few, to explain to her what was re- 
quired of one who would sincerely embrace the faith of 
Protestant Christians, and turn away from the Church of 
which she had been a member. And I told her that I 
could do nothing for her — that she must go directly to 
Him who had promised to be the Saviour of all who be- 
lieve on Him ; and that to be a Protestant it was necessary 
only that she should receive Christ as her Saviour, and 
not rely upon a priest to say mass, nor a Virgin Mary to 
intercede for her. She did not get into the sense of this, 
and insisted that she must then and there, before she 
went again to her home, become a Protestant, and be able 
to tell her husband so. To satisfy her, and to do as well 
by her as I could, I then went to my library and, taking 
a folio volume, wrote a renunciation of every evil way, 
and a pledge of faithful obedience to the command- 

R 



258 UNDER THE TREES. 

ments of Christ, by faith in whom salvation is to be 
found. Armed with this volume, I came again to the 
woman and read in her hearing the words I had written, 
explaining their full meaning to her as I read. 

" That's it," she said ; " that's just what I want : now 
we won't fight again." 

She could not write her name to the deed of renuncia- 
tion, but she made her mark with a bold and steady hand, 
for her mind was made up, and she knew what she was 
doing. The deed was done, and she was going away 
with many blessings on me for turning her into a Prot- 
estant, when she stopped on the steps and said : 

" And I'll come to you to confess." 

" No, no, my good woman, you are not much of a Prot- 
estant if you are coming to me or any other man to con- 
fess your sins. Tell all your sins to God, and he will for- 
give you for Christ's sake, and then sin no more; but 
don't come to me to confess." 

"But I will," she said as she disappeared from the 
door. I never saw nor heard from her again. It was a 
blunder of mine not to take the number and street where 
she and her husband in time past had their battle-ground, 
for I might then have followed her up, and perhaps 
strengthened her resolutions of reform, and done some 
good to her husband, who, Protestant as he was, was prob- 
ably quite as much to blame for the fighting as the wife. 
And it is very certain that if he were as much disposed to 
avoid quarreling as she was, the reign of peace would 
have been perpetual in that house. As it takes two to 
make a bargain, so it always requires at least two for a 
fight. It was certainly a great shame that " Betsey and 
he" should be "out" on the subject of religion, just the 
last thing in the world about which people should quar- 



PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES. 259 

rel. But the subject-matter of dispute is of very little im- 
portance in families or states ; if the disposition to quar- 
rel exist, there is no loss for an occasion. Out of the 
heart come fightings. Even those who love one another 
may get into a fight if there is not a disposition in each 
party to let the other have his or her way and the last 
word. The old story of the rat and the mouse is older 
than mine of the woman who wanted to be turned, and 
like that story will bear being told once more. 

A loving, newly married couple sat down to tea for the 
first time in their new home. Happy as a pair of birds, 
they were billing and cooing to each other, when see- 
ing something run out of the chimney corner, they ex- 
claimed — one of them, " Oh, see that rat !" and the other, 
"Oh, see that mouse !" 
"Oh no, it was a rat." 
" No, it was a mouse." 

" Not at all, my dear-; I saw it, and I am sure it was a 
rat." 

" And I saw it too, and I know it was a mouse." 
"I say it was a rat." 
"I say it was a mouse." 

" 'Twas a rat." " 'Twas a mouse." " 'Twas a rat." 
" 'Twas a mouse." And they kept it up till both v/ere in 
a passion, and finally the bride in her tears and her 
anger said she would go home to her parents ; and away 
she went. 

A few days or weeks of reflection showed them both 
their exceeding folly, and they readily yielded to the sug- 
gestion of friends that they were a couple of little fools, 
and had better come together again, which they did. 

Once more seated at their cheerful tea-table in the co- 
siest of rooms, and happy in the thought that they were 



26o UNDER THE TREES. 

restored to their own sweet home, they looked across the 
table into each other's eyes, and one of them said laugh- 
ingly to the other : 

" Was it not foolish for us to make such a fuss about 
that good-for-nothing little mouse ?" 

" Why, dear, it wasn't a mouse — it was a rat." 
" No, love, it was a mouse ; I saw it myself." 
" And so did I, and I am sure it was a rat." 
And so at it they went again, one as positive and un- 
yielding as the other, till they were as mad as they were 
before, and the wife went off to her papa, and that ended 
the story. 



XXII. 

ON LYING AND LENDING. 

There is an art in lying, but you have no need to 
read any thing about it. That remark sounds as if you 
are so familiar with the art as to require no further in- 
struction. Such is not the intent; but this: You are so 
free from tendencies in that direction, you so love, honor, 
and cherish the truth as the holiest of holies, that I need 
not spend time in giving you lessons in an art you will 
never practice nor preach. 

Nor will I give lessons for any body in this art, which 
is so well understood as to require no books to teach it, 
no rules to govern it. It has its masters every where. 
They go astray, said the ancient poet, from the birth, 
speaking lies. It was lying that began the fall in Eden, 
and it has been growing ever since. In some countries 
it is so common, this telling of lies, that no one believes 
his neighbor. The Greeks are said to be great liars. In 
heathen countries very slight regard is paid to the truth. 
We are in the habit of saying that Roman Catholics re- 
gard the truth with less sacredness than we do. But I 
do not know that lying is any more common among them 
than among large classes of people who call themselves 
Protestants. Take the money-making men, who get their 
gains by the rise and fall of prices. Is it any strange 
thing for them to set on foot a lie to affect the market? 
Being myself in the newspaper line, I would be very 



262 UNDER THE TREES, 

slow to intimate that newspapers ever say any thing that 
is not strictly true. But when two of the daily papers 
get into a quarrel, the tricks of the trade sometimes 
come out ; and we have reason to fear that sometimes, 
in default of news from the seat of war, there is a manu- 
facture of " cable telegrams " and " letters from our cor- 
respondents," which are palmed off upon the unsuspect- 
ing public as veritable facts. This is lying, and there is 
great art in it. A litterateur told me that he prepares a 
weekly article for one of the city papers on the " Rats of 
Brazil," or the " Cockroaches in Japan," or something of 
that sort. " Not that there are any," said he, "but I make 
a sensational chapter on a subject that few can know any 
thing about, and I get ten dollars for it. That pays my 
board." Here was a specimen of the art of lying; in- 
deed, it was elevated to the rank of the fine arts. Cer- 
tainly it becomes a fine art, when a painting is offered for 
sale as an original which has been copied from a copy, 
and half ruined to make it bear the marks of age. 

There is another art that comes under the same head, 
or on the same head, and that is the art of coloring the 
hair. One of my ministerial, acquaintances undertook to 
lie about his hair — that is, to dye it — and the chemical 
compound that he used produced such a frightful color 
that he was frightened with the fear of divine judgment 
on his head. I think dyeing is lying. Whether a man 
or a woman do it, the motive is a bad one : the intent is 
to deceive, and that is the very essence of lying. I am 
told that one half of the men who go to our church dye 
their hair habitually, and, if so, I shall run the chance of 
giving offense to many whom I would much rather please. 

You ask a ftiechanic to do a job for you. It is his 
trade ; he wants to do it, and he gets his pay for it. He 



ON LYING AND LENDING. 263 

promises you it shall be done by Saturday night. Another 
customer and another comes, and he wishes to serve 
them all and get their money. He makes the same 
promise, well knowing that some of them must be disap- 
pointed. Job after job is thus engaged, and the same 
promise repeated, with the dead certainty that it will be 
broken. This is the art of lying applied to a trade. And 
it runs through a hundred trades. It destroys confidence 
in human nature. But it is the custom, and is as universal 
in Christian countries as in heathen. There is very little 
conscience about it. " Other people do so, and the job 
will go somewhere else if I do not promise ;" and so it is 
taken, and the lie is told. 

Borrowers are often great liars. There is less con- 
science in this than in almost any other matter. Many a 
man who would see a twenty-dollar bill lying on my ta- 
ble and never think of stealing it, will ask me to lend it 
to him and never pay it. Or, what is next door to the 
same thing, will not pay it when it was promised. I knew 
a clergyman who would get his check cashed after bank 
hours by a friend who would find the next day that the 
minister had no money in the bank, and never had. 
There is no true religion in a man who borrows and does 
not pay when he engages to do so. Misfortune may 
overtake him, and unforeseen circumstances prevent his 
doing his duty; such cases are exceptional. But borrow- 
ers are often great liars. I would there were more con- 
science in the matter of borrowing books. A friend gave 
me four volumes of a Latin classic with a French transla- 
tion, elegantly bound in gilt calf A Quaker friend asked 
me to lend him one volume of it for a special purpose, with 
the promise of its speedy return. Alas ! he never brought 



264 UNDER THE TREES. 

t 

it back ; and when I sent for it, he said he had mislaid, 
lost it. The three remaining volumes are standing up 
before me this moment, silent witnesses that this friend 
was — well, what shall I call him ? to sa}'^ he was a liar or 
a thief is hard, but he injured me quite as much as if he 
had stolen my book. And he certainly broke" his prom- 
ise. If that were not the art of lying, it was the art of 
book-keeping, and I have the best of reasons to know 
that book-keeping is not one of the lost arts. 

Truth between man and man is one of the cardinal 
virtues. It is at the basis of good character and of hon- 
orable success in life. It despises ^hams in public and 
private. Hating deception of every form and kind — all 
glosses, paints, covers, disguises, subterfuges, tricks, eva- 
sions, every thing that maketh a lie, that misleads or de- 
ceives another — it is always above-board, frank, manly, 
courageous, and faithful. In the Church and in the world 
there is an abundant lack of this vital element of honest 
truth. It is not always good manners to call a spade a 
spade, but to attempt to deceive is to lie, and for the want 
of a better word I use it. It was a great poet and good 
man who once said in haste, "All men are liars." I do 
not venture upon so broad and unwarrantable an asser- 
tion. I should be untrue, if I did. But with every de- 
sire to be charitable and within bounds, and not so hasty 
as the bard of old, I am constrained to say with Recorder 
Riker that " the practice is quite too common in this 
community," 

I have met with something of a loss. Not money ; I 
could, from bitter experience, write feelingly of that sor- 
row. Just now I am mourning the loss of a text of 
Scripture, and how it happened is in this wise : In the 



ON LYING AND LENDING. 265 

Second Book of Kings it is written that the students of 
a theological seminary thought their quarters were too 
small, and proposed to the president, whose name was 
Elisha, that they should build something on a larger scale. 
He gave his consent, and they went to work. As they 
were cutting down a tree on the banks of Jordan, the axe 
of one of the students fell into the water and sank ; the 
loser cried out and said, " Alas, master ! for it was bor- 
rowed." Now, on taking up a new and learned commen- 
tary on this book by Dr. Kiel, I find that in his notes 
upon this text he says : " The word here rendered dor- 
' rowed IS begged; the meaning to borrow is attributed from 
a misinterpretation : the prophet's pupil had begged the 
axe, because from his poverty he was unable to buy one ; 
and hence the loss was so painful to him." 

I had always valued that text as one left on long rec- 
drd, as a testimony that one man once lived who regret- 
ted the loss of a thing the more because it was borrowed 
than if it had been his own. To be sure, we have not the 
young man's name : like Lot's wife, he is an anonymous 
individual. But his virtuous exclamation of sorrow, his 
plaintive wail as the axe fell from his hand and sank be- 
neath the wave, was to go down to all time as the fitting 
reflection of every right man when he loses any thing 
that he had borrowed. Dr. Jamieson, who has just made 
a new commentary on Kings, holds fast to the old idea 
of the translator, though he gives a mean kind of a rea- 
son for the young man's grief. He writes : " The schol- 
ar's distress arose from the consideration that the axe had 
been lent to him ; and that, owing to his poverty, he could 
not procure another." That is too bad. I supposed the 
young man was sorry that he had lost another man's 
property ; and, because of his own poverty, could not re- 



266 UNDER THE TREES. 

place it. But Dr. Jamieson thinks the boy was grieved 
only because he could not get another axe. Well, the 
doctor has the idea of most borrowers, we must admit. 
An habitual borrower has as little conscience as Dr. 
Jamieson attributes to this student in Dr. Elisha's theo- 
logical school. He keeps what he borrowed, till he re- 
gards it as his own ; or, losing it, regrets the loss on his 
own account only, and not the owner's. 

A neighbor in the country who sends in every day to 
borrow a little of this, and just a little of that, and a very 
little of the other thing — now it is milk, now eggs, now 
sugar, now soap — is not a very desirable neighbor, except 
as all afflictions, crosses, vexations, and trials, when prop- 
erly received and enjoyed, are a sort of good to them who 
are exercised thereby. On this principle, such neighbors 
are to be endured, perhaps prized as blessings in dis- 
guise. Yet they would find it much more for their own 
comfort to provide things honest for themselves, aTid cul- 
tivate such habits of domestic economy as would prevent 
the necessity of their taxing the faith and patience of the 
saints who dwell near unto them. 

To return to our books. Book-keeping is a science ex- 
tensively cultivated by borrowers, and there is probably 
less conscience on this subject than on umbrellas. He 
who borrows the latter may feel that the owner is ex- 
posed without shelter to the pitiless pelting of a storm, 
and such feelings may lead to penitence and restitution. 
But no such salutary meditation disturbs the calm seren- 
ity of the wretch who has borrowed his friend's book. 
He knew that his friend had read the book, and there- 
fore he pretends to himself that it can not be wanted 
again. He reads it without remorse. And when he has 
read it, he beholds it from time to time standing in broad 



ON LYING AND LENDING. 267 

daylight before him, a silent witness against him, but no 
sense of guilt steals on his senses ; no thought of regret 
for his own wrong, nor pity for his despoiled friend stirs 
the deeps of his depraved heart. Hardened by long 
indulgence in this course of evil-doing, he has been lost 
to all the gentler considerations of propriety, friendship, 
honesty, and honor ; until, from being a borrower, he has 
come to be a thief, and thinks it no ill. 

A clergyman of my acquaintance was asked if he had 
read a new and valuable publication, and on his saying 
that he had not, the loan of it was at once offered to him. 
He declined it, with the remark that he did not read any 
books which he could not buy. Of course, he would not 
decline the aid of public libraries, where books are lent 
for hire, and every subscriber is part owner ; but he would 
not get his knowledge from borrowed books, nor sponge 
upon his friends. 

Broken sets of books stand as memorials of my un- 
trustworthy friends. In an hour of weakness I permitted 
the books to go from the shelves, and the places that 
knew them once know them no more. It would be grate- 
ful to my lacerated feelings if the borrowers would return 
and take away the remains of the sets, or restore the miss- 
ing volumes to the empty space. 

It is not possible to ask a man to return borrowed 
goods — books, money, or any thing else — without putting 
in peril the beautiful friendship on the strength of which 
he fleeced you. He was a wise man who said to his 
friend wishing to borrow : " You and I are now good 
friends — if I lend you money and you do not pay it, we 
shall quarrel ; if I refuse to lend you, I suppose we shall 
quarrel : there are two chances of a quarrel, and I think 
I will keep the money, rather than run the risk of losing 
it and you." 



268 UNDER THE TREES. 

He had in mind the old saw : 

"I had my money and my friend, 
I lent my money to my friend ; 
I asked my money of my friend, 
I lost my money and my friend." 

"The borrower is servant to the lender," saith the Bi- 
ble. That is so when the borrower has made himself li- 
able to the law, so that the lender can put the screws 
upon him when he does not come to time. But in all 
the petty concerns of neighborhood life, especially in the 
rural districts, it is the lender who is the servant of the 
borrower. The inveterate beggar is not so great a pest, 
because you can give him what he demands, and he is 
off. But the borrower lives near and on you. Nothing 
you have is too good for him to ask for. Things you 
prize the most, which you use only on rare occasions, and 
then with extremest care — sacred in associations, or deli- 
cate, and therefore precious — the borrower asks the loan 
of without scruple, and uses without fear, with the feeling 
that, if injured, he is not the loser, for happily it was bor- 
rowed. There is a beauty in good neighborhood. That 
help-one-another spirit which prompts to constant recip- 
rocal kindness makes life in the country, among neigh- 
bors, tharming. But when it is like the handle of a pitch- 
er, all on one side, this borrowing becomes a nuisance to 
be abated by general agreement among the oppressed. 



XXIII. 

LITTLE TRIALS. 

It has been often said that it is harder to bear little 
trials than great ones, and many persons make the re- 
mark as if it were an excuse for being vexed at trifles, or 
for making trifles into mountains. Of all possible troubles 
in this world, perhaps no one source is more full of trial 
to the temper and the patience of mankind than disa- 
greeable weather. It would certainly disturb the peace- 
ful equanimity of soul which is this moment enjoyed in 
this old arm-chair if the wind should shift around to 
the east, as it did last week, and another cold storm 
should set in, and set down. It kept me in-doors for two 
days ; and when I came out here to have a little pen- 
chat under the trees, the seat of the chair was a pool of 
water, and the trees themselves shed drops of grief, as if 
they were mourning in their solitude ; and the ground 
was so damp that it was unsafe to be a man of letters 
out-of-doors, and I was obliged to give it up. And even 
then and there, or else by an open window, the change of 
air with the cold northeast wind might give one a touch 
of that most deplorable of all the isms that infest the 
state — the rheumatism — a trial to the faith and patience 
that may fairly claim to be equal to any other of which 
flesh is heir. 

John Wesley was visiting a very wealthy gentleman, 
who was greatly annoyed by a servant leaving the door 



270 UNDER THE TREES. 

Open, and he said to his guest, " You See what annoy- 
ances I am compelled to endure." Mr. Wesley took the 
occasion to preach him a little sermon on the duty of 
being patient under such trifling vexations of spirit, 
when he was surrounded with all the good things that 
heart could desire. And it is not likely that the posses- 
sion of good things, by the thousand even, tends to make 
one patient under the infliction of a petty grievance. 
Rather it tends to create the feeling that money, or what 
money buys, ought to purchase exemption from the little 
troubles that are the necessary lot of the poor. " It is a 
great pity that I can not be comfortable," says the man 
of wealth and ease, "with all these servants about me, 
and this great house, and all this furniture." And the 
woman who flatters herself that a costly establishment, 
with a retinue of men and maids, will keep her from little 
trials, will find herself so sadly mistaken that she will 
often sigh for a cottage of three rooms in which perhaps 
she began her married life. 

And these little trials, among the rich and the poor 
alike, are for the most part imaginary, or at most so near- 
ly ideal that they are not worthy of being fretted at oy an 
intelligent man or woman. Who has not seen a full- 
grown man, of average sense and fair reputation for 
virtue, out of humor because his dinner was not ready 
when he was, or not cooked to his taste when it was 
served? He could meet with the loss of a thousand 
dollars, and not speak of it at home ; he could bear that 
in silence, with patience and serenity; but to be com- 
pelled to wait half an hour for a rail-train or his dinner 
would throw him off his balance, and provoke him to use 
such impatient words as hardly become a man of average 
self-control. His wife is a notable housekeeper, with an 



LITTLE TRIALS. 271 

awful eye for dirt, and she can put up with any thing if 
the house is only clean. But a few specks on the win- 
dows or an undusted parlor will put her into fits, that 
nothing but cold water and rubbing — not of her, but of 
the windows and furniture — will cure. 

Indeed, it is not unusual to see gpod people more dis- 
turbed by the little vexations of life than they are by real 
trials, such as come home to their hearts, and might 
reasonably be supposed to overwhelm them with sorrow. 
The reason of this inconsistency may be that the little 
trial is so insignificant itself that one scarcely thinks of 
calling in grace or philosophy to help in bearing it. In- 
stead of resisting, the soul worries and frets till the 
trouble irritates and wounds and festers, and then breeds 
others. Seven evil spirits come home with the first, and 
the house is turned upside down by the fretfulness of the 
soul now under the power of the evil one. 

If we had a higher sense of the greatness of our pres- 
ent comforts, and a deeper sense of our unworthiness to 
have them, we would be less disposed to repine when we 
suffer for a time the loss of some of them. He was wise 
who, when he had the toothache, was thankful that he had 
not a broken leg ; and when the leg was broken, that it 
was not his neck. And if we compare our enjoyments 
with our trials, and take the balance as the sum that we 
have a right to make the most of, we shall discover that 
there is no reason in the world for being discontented 
with our lot. More than this, it is the testimony of Infi- 
nite Wisdom, confirmed, if confirmation is wanted, by the 
experience of all good men who have left their experience 
on record, that little trials and great trials are means to 
ends, and those ends are the greatest and best in the 
moral universe. When the young eagles in the nest 



272 UNDER THE TREES. 

where they were hatched have grown to be too large for 
it, however much they may love to stay in it and be fed 
by indulgent parents, the old eagle stirs them up and 
crowds them out, and compels them to do their duty in 
the sphere to which eagles are called. It will not be 
permitted to any one. who has work to do, to dwell at ease 
in his nest and be fed all the time ; to take comfort, as 
we call it, forgetful of the duties of life and the calls of a 
world suffering around us. These little trials are to stir 
us up, and drive us out of ourselves. We would not mind 
them at all if we had our eyes and hearts on the great 
business for which we were put into this garden. 

And nearly all these little crosses and vexations which 
we dignify by the name of trials, are not worth speaking 
of, and to-morrow they are quite forgotten, though to-day 
they seem to be intolerable. 



♦ 



XXIV. 
TALKING TO MAN AND BEAST. 

Had I my life to live over again — how often we say or 
think these words, and it were well if they lead us to put 
what remains of life to better use — I would, with God's 
good help, never speak a harsh word to man or beast. 

I have been in state -prisons, and studied the system 
and practical workings of the theories of various overseers 
and governors ; and in reformatories and asylums, and 
houses of refuge and penitentiaries and jails, and also in 
Christian families and boarding-schools ; and in all of 
them have earnestly, candidly, and anxiously sought to 
learn the best way to make men better ; and the result of 
all this observation and study is that no good and only 
evil come of harsh speaking. 

The other extreme, the milk-and-water system, cod- 
dling the wicked to make them good, coaxing a villain to 
induce him to be a saint, giving a child candy to stop 
crying, or hiring him to do what he ought to be required 
to do — this or the like of this is just as far from the right 
way of dealing with the wayward and refractory. 

Children are not fools generally, and convicts are usu- 
ally smart. They who are under parental government, or 
in the hands of the law, undergoing the penalty of crime, 
very soon get to know the measure of those who are over 
them, and act accordingly. They see the inconsistency 
and folly of the sugar system, and learn to despise those 

S 



274 UNDER THE TREES. 

who try it on. Bribing or coaxing people to be good 
makes them worse, for they are only corrupted by the 
gifts or promise, and when the motive is not repeated 
they are less than ever disposed to do what is required. 

What set me upon this train of thought was a letter 
calling my attention to the late killing of his keeper by a 
boy in the House of Refuge, and I was asked to make 
some inquiries into the system of discipline in that and 
similar institutions, as one of the most important depart- 
ments of philanthropic effort. But I do not know that 
the desperate act of a bad boy, or the murder of his keep- 
er by a convict in a state -prison, would show any thing 
respecting the general discipline of the establishment. 
It is not unknown that children have murdered their par- 
ents, and where there are hundreds of men or boys to- 
gether, all of whom are collected because they are bad, 
there must be among them some so bad as to defy the in- 
fluences that have restrained or changed others. 

The best man, or the one who has just now the highest 
and best reputation as a prison manager, believes \n pun- 
ishing prisoners — in making them feel that they are in 
prison not only to be reformed, but to suffer a penalty 
for crime. He mingles firmness, justice, and kindness in 
such proportions as to give him great power over the con- 
vict, and real success in promoting his reformation. 

A wise governor of a prison or a school or a family 
never scolds, never speaks a harsh or hasty word. In- 
deed, the first requisite to the successful government of 
others is self-government. And no one expends words 
upon others in tones of impatience or severity until he 
has lost command of himself 

Rarey, the horse-tamer, gave us lessons in the art of 
reforming vicious beasts. I saw him subdue a horse of 



TALKING TO MAN AND BEAST. 275 

whom it would have been said the day before that " no 
man could tame him." But there was almost magic in the 
art and science that rendered the fiery and fractious, the 
biting and kicking beast, as gentle as a lamb. He did 
not speak harshly to him, nor did he inflict blows. But 
he mastered him, held him, fettered him, and, by firm- 
ness and gentleness combined, subdued his will. The 
same treatment certainly ought to be better for animals 
with reason than animals without it. It is a question 
that is yet unsettled whether such animals as dogs and 
horses reason. They have some faculty so near to fea- 
son that they can be reasoned with. They learn also to 
understand words, so that they can be talked to to some 
purpose. They certainly have feelings, and far deeper 
than their hides. They notice our neglect and are hurt 
by it, as a human friend is. They rejoice in our kind- 
ness as one does whom we love; and because they are 
unable by words to tell us how they suffer, or to make 
excuse for the wrong they do and for which we punish 
them', it is our duty to be very tender and considerate in 
our treatment of them. No good man would do wrong 
to a dog or a horse any more than to a child, without be- 
ing sorry for it. I have profound respect for Mr. Bergh, 
who has done so much to prevent cruelty to animals. 
He deserves an equestrian statue in the Central Park. It 
should stand at the principal entrance. If the proposal 
were made to the horses, there would not be a nay among 
them. 

But I would not put up a statue to the pigeon-shooting 
men ; they need to feel the force of statutes made and 
provided for such cases as theirs. Among them I see 
men whose names are respected in political and financial 
circles. It may be that these words from one so far re- 



276 UNDER THE TREES, 

moved from such circles as I am may reach them, and 
convey to them some faint impression of the regret and 
indignation they excite when for sport they shoot birds. 
It is small business any way, if that may be called small 
which involves the suffering and the life of any creature. 
And I would like to have sporting gentlemen reminded 
that as a sparrow does not fall to the ground without the 
notice of the Infinite Majesty, so it is quite certain that 
when a pigeon, wounded, bleeding, and gasping, lies quiv- 
ering before them, the good God is not pleased with the 
sacrifice, and will charge the murder to their account. 
Cowper would not keep on his list of friends the man who 
needlessly set foot upon a worm, and I do not care to be 
on terms with one who wantonly hurts a bird. 



XXV. 

LOVING AND DOING. 

When Dr. Franklin was American Minister- to France, 
and residing at Passy, a small village near Paris, he wrote 
a letter to Dr. Mather, in which he said : 

" When I was a boy, I met with a book by your father, 
entitled, ' Essays to do Good.' It had been so little re- 
garded by its former possessor that several leaves of it 
were torn out, but the remainder gave me such a turn of 
thinking as to have an influence on my conduct through 
life, for I have always set a greater value on the charac- 
ter of a doer of good than on any other kind of reputation ; 
and if I have been, as you seem to think, a useful citizen, 
the public owes the advantage of it to that book." 

To one who has only the amelioration of the present or 
temporal condition of his fellow-men in view, the life of 
Franklin is a beautiful example of what one man may do 
who gives his life to humane, philanthropic, and judicious 
essays to do good. If Mather's " Essay " were the inspira- 
tion of Franklin, you see what the little book did ; and if 
Mather made Franklin a philanthropist, you may be en- 
couraged to be like the one or the other, or both. Frank- 
lin made no pretensions to Christian motives of action. 
Whitefield was coming to Philadelphia when Franklin 
resided there, and Dr. F. wrote to W. and invited him to 
be his guest during his stay. The great preacher wrote, 
accepting his invitation with thanks, and added : "If you 



278 UNDER THE TREES. 

do this for Christ's sake, you will not lose your reward." 
Franklin replied immediately that "he wished it to be 
distinctly understood that it was done for Mr.Whitefield's 
sake." 

Frankhn loved his fellow-men, there is no doubt of 
that ; and lived, of course, to do them good. 

Among the mountains of Switzerland, in a secluded vil- 
lage of the Canton of Appenzell, I made the acquaintance 
of a philanthropist, who was using a large fortune, and all 
his time and strength, in doing good to others. Like his 
Master, he went about doing good. He had asylums and 
hospitals and schools and shops sustained by his money, 
and over which he kept personal watch, going from door 
to door, and seeing that every thing was done as it should 
be. He was a walking benediction, a peripatetic joy. 
Little children left their play when they saw him passing 
by, ran up and put their hands into his, and returned to 
their sport. He lived to do good. And he told me that 
it was not of himself at all : that some unseen agency im- 
pelled him to do all this, and over the doors of some of 
his homes for the suffering he had placed inscriptions 
giving the praise to Him who had put him up to it. 

In New York there is a good man dwelling, whom to 
know is a great blessing ; to be able to call him your 
friend would be an honor. He was once in the Moravian 
connection. Now he is a minister of the Episcopal 
Church. For some years he was the rector of a free 
church, and it was thronged whenever it was open by 
multitudes eager to be led by him in the worship and 
service of God. By -and -by he founded and built St. 
Luke's Hospital, and went into it to live among the pa- 
tients, to be their pastor and comforter, day and night 
and always. For many years he has dwelt there, married 



LOVING AND DOING. 279 

only to Christ and his work, doing good, and in that only- 
finding his joy, or if not joy — for it is of no moment 
whether one have joy here or not — finding his good in 
doing good, and so getting out of life the best that life can 
yield. He has realized another of his many schemes for 
the comfort of others, in laying out a tract of five hundred 
acres in an adjacent county, where he has a retreat for 
the aged poor and invalids and orphans ; and a home for 
the homeless, who find rest and peace in St. Johnland. 
Some years ago, he — that is, Dr. Muhlenberg — wrote a 
hymn which millions have sung, beginning — 

"I would not live alway, 
I ask not to stay ; 
Where storm after storm 
Rises dark o'er the way." 

He is known to the world better by that hymn than 
by his philanthropic and Christian work, but his work is 
more characteristic of him than the hymn. I have no 
doubt Job was honest when he said, " I would not live 
alway," but he said it under great trials and disappoint- 
ments. And he who has the joy of seeing that his labors 
are prospered to the blessedness of others, so that he is 
able to say as Job could say before his calamities, " The 
blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me ; 
and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy: I put on 
righteousness, and it clothed me ; my judgment was as a 
robe and a diadem : I was eyes to the blind, and feet was 
I to the lame : I was a father to the poor ; and the cause 
which I knew not, I searched out " — he may well be 
content to "stay" just as long as the good Lord is pleased 
to keep him here, and give him work to do. Indeed, the 
place we are in is our place, and all we have to do is to 
make the most and best of it for the good of those near 



2bO UNDER THE TREES. 

US, and those to whom we can send the good we can not 
give with our hands. 

The most thoroughly self-sacrificing man I ever saw 
was Dr. Guggenbuhl, in his school for idiots, away up on 
a mountain near Interlaken. It nearly made me sick to 
see the Cretins around him. He was a gentleman of 
culture and learning and skill and fortune. He might 
have had his place at the head of his profession in any 
city. But he was in the woods and among idiots, only to 
do good. He died in the service. It was a life beauti- 
ful in its devotion, and he had his reward. But he did 
not set the reward before him as the end, the motive. He 
loved to do good, and the reward came of necessity. 

Pastor Heldring went to Hohenderlo, a miserable wil- 
derness of a place, full of thieves and robbers, and he set 
about doing them good. They had to go a long distance 
to get a drop of fresh water, for it had been found impos- 
sible to dig a well, and the good man worked till he over- 
came all difficulties ; and when he had caused a spring to 
spring up there, he soon had a school and a church, and 
by-and-by the wilderness blossomed as the rose. You 
may not teach idiots, or dig wells in a desert, or found 
asylums, or write hymns ; but you are called to do good. 
There is a little world in which you dwell, and its name 
is the sweetest word perhaps of all. Its name is home. 
You may do a world of good in that little world. It is 
the easiest thing imaginable to do good. You may do it 
with words or without words. You may do it by cheer- 
ful looks and kind, gentle ways ; by keeping your lips 
closed when an impatient, fault-finding expression is ready 
to escape ; by cheering those about you with perpetual 
loving words and little deeds of kindness, not worth men- 
tioning, but worth more than rubies to the heart that feels 



■ LOVING AND DOING. 281 

their infinite power. And then all about you is this wide 
world, full of sore places for you to heal, dark places for 
you to lighten, rough places for you to smooth, sad places 
for you to cheer, wicked places for you to fill with the 
saving love of the dear Lord. 

When Jesus became man, he made the whole human 
race his brethren, as we are brethren. And when he 
came unto his own, his own received him not. In that 
wonderful drama, drawn out in the twenty-fifth chapter 
of Matthew, and which has never had half the power and 
importance in the Church and in theology to which it is 
entitled, the great Teacher has given an outline of the 
Christian system. The moral grandeur of the scene is 
unsurpassed in the facts of history or the realms of poetry. 
In all the conditions there stated by the Judge in his 
awards, sympathy shown to those in distress is the chief 
if not the only ground on which he pronounces the word 
" come " or " go." " I was in prison," he says, " and ye 
came unto me." Was he there in the person of some 
saint unjustly seized and shut up among thieves? Or 
did he intimate that the wicked — criminals, convicts, out- 
casts—they who have broken the laws of God and man, 
and were justly suffering the punishment of their crimes, 
were objects of Christian kindness, persons to be visited 
in their cells with the words and deeds of divine compas- 
sion and holy love ? And when he put himself between 
the wicked woman and the men who were disposed to be 
hard upon her as a grievous sinner whom their law wsuld 
not suffer to live, he gave them a lesson never to be for- 
gotten by men or women, that charity to the wicked, even 
the vilest of the wicked — for there is no vileness in the 
world more vile than such sin as this woman sinned — 



I 



282 UNDER THE TREES. 

that charity even to such as she, is the outflow of the 
spirit of him whose lips, dropping the sweetness of heaven, 
said, "Go and sin no more." And the whole science 
of Christian duty is set forth and illustrated and proved 
in those few sentences of the mountain discourse, when 
the Saviour says: "Love your enemies, bless them that 
curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for 
them which despitefully use you ; that ye may be the 
children of your Father which is in heaven : for he mak- 
eth his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and send- 
eth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love 
them which love you, what reward have ye ? do not even 
the publicans the same ?" 

Then comes the concluding, clinching, and exhaustive 
command, " Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father 
which is in heaven is perfect." Look closely into the 
philosophy and the religion of those passages from the 
best of all sermons. 

And when he came to die ! He had lived among sin- 
ners ; he had done works of mercy for sinners ; he had 
been reproached for living so much among them ; and 
when he came to die, what then ? He was hung between 
two thieves. Wondrous combination of facts, to make the 
death of the Saviour harmonious with his life. They who 
did it, meant it not so. They would crown his death with 
ignominy, and so they crucified him — and between two 
thieves. He came from glory to save sinners. He lived 
among them ; ministered unto them. He loved the lost, 
and' sought them in their sins. And when he died in 
shame, he had a sinner, a thief — the one on his right 
hand and the other on his left, and Jesus in the midst. 

Now when you think of the way in which our Lord 
lived and died, and when you are longing to be like him, 



LOVING AND DOING. 283 

and to be perfect as your Father is perfect, you will try 
to do good ; present good, temporal good — to sinners, to 
the wicked, to " cursing mothers and drunken fathers ;" 
and to that class of sinners from whom the most of 
Christ's people, and especially Christian women, turn 
away with mingled hate and scorn. 

To do good for the sake of the reward may be the 
zenith of self-worship. • But there is no merit in doing 
good to those who pay us by their love and gratitude for 
what we do. To make a widow's heart sing for joy may 
be done in such a way as to make your own heart sing 
louder. And you surely do not expect any higher re- 
ward. The sweetest of all earthly pleasures is to be the 
minister of gladness to the sick or the wounded or the 
poor, who are themselves gentle and good and grateful. 
They praise you, and tell you what an angel you are, and 
you half believe them, and it makes you feel very happy. 
It is the cheapest way in the world to get a cheerful glow 
all over your heart. You are not much more like your 
Father, who is perfect, for having done the good deed. It 
was well. But nothing very great. It was nothing to 
speak of, and when you gave your dollar or ten to the 
female benevolent society, which hires good women to go 
about with baskets of charity,- you did a good thing, but it 
was of no great account in the sight of him who poured 
out his blood for you. 

Go yourself Take the basket on your own arm. Visit 
the cellar, damp and dirty ; climb the rickety garret stairs 
yourself, and with your own hands and pleasant words 
dispense the gifts of food, clothing, medicine, and care. 



XXVI. 

THE NEGLECTED GRAVEYARD: 

Riding out into the country some eight or ten miles 
yesterday (and these days are superb for driving over the 
hills and along the valleys), I came by an ancient and 
apparently forgotten graveyard. It was so far from the 
sight of the living, that the thought was natural, "the 
people are all here." But somebody must have buried 
them ; and I soon discovered that it was only a mile or 
two from the village, and the whole country side was 
densely populated with the living, many of them doubt- 
less the relatives and friends of the dwellers in this si- 
lent land. But what affected me the most strangely and 
sadly was the utter neglect and desolation that reigned 
among these tombs. It was easy to step over the stone 
wall, and I picked my way around and among the grave- 
stones, some of them lying on the ground, others ready to 
fall, and most of them so hidden by weeds and bushes that 
it was hard to read the inscriptions, or to find the name 
they were set up to commemorate. Yet on many of those 
that I succeeded in reaching and reading were words of 
affection; lines that told me how tenderly once were 
loved the ashes that are now lying here unnoticed and 
perhaps unknown. On some of the old headstones the 
dates could be made out that went away back to the days 
of our Revolution, and it is very likely that in this chang- 
ing world of ours, and very changing country, there is no 



THE NEGLECTED GRAVEYARD. 285 

one now living here who has the blood or the memory 
of these ancients in his heart. But here are inscriptions 
that have been made within the last twenty or thirty 
years, and they too seem to have been made by hands 
that are now cold, or to have been prompted by hearts 
that have forgotten. 

It helps to humble us to take a walk in a neglected 
graveyard. We think that we are of some value to our 
friends, and they would grieve much if we were taken 
away. And we think rightly. But how very soon after 
the grave closes over us is the place where we sleep suf- 
fered to pass into oblivion ! Perhaps a stone with a 
record of their estimate of our worth is set up ; but even 
that is suffered to be overgrown with weeds, or to fall to 
the ground as we fell but a few years before. When a 
stone is thrown into a lake it makes a great commotion 
for a moment, but very soon the water is as placid as if 
its surface had not been disturbed at all. And when a 
great man dies, or one who was greatly beloved in the 
circle of his acquaintance, the heart of the community is 
stirred : we talk of the whole people being in tears. But 
a few months only and all is as if nothing had happened ; 
and in a few years his name is rarely mentioned. His 
grave is neglected. The places that knew him, know him 
no more. It will be just so with us. We can not tell 
where we shall be buried; and a few years after we are 
buried how very few in all the world will know or care 
where we are sleeping! It is not very grateful to our 
pride to take this view of our future ; but if we may judge 
by what we see here and every where, this oblivion awaits 
the most of us. 

It is a mark of low civilization that the country grave- 
yard is a forlorn and neglected place. Religion and re- 



286 UNDER THE TREES. 

finement would both encourage us to guard it from the 
intrusion of beasts, and also to make it attractive, that 
the living may be led to come and meditate among its 
tombs. There is an excess even of floral ornament that 
tends to destroy the proper effect. I have seen cemeter- 
ies that were rather places of entertainment for the living 
than fitting homes for the dead. This is the tendency 
in rural cemeteries near the city, the resort of visitors 
who go to see how death can be cheated of its terrors, 
and his field of triumph made a holiday spectacle. Yet 
even these groves and drives and lakes and bridges and 
flowers innumerable and glaring monuments, costly whited 
sepulchres, are more becoming than this desert desola- 
tion that reigns in many country church-yards, and those 
not a hundred miles from the city. 

They should have walks laid out between the rows of 
graves, and monthly roses ought to be planted on either 
side, with here and there a weeping-willow, and the cy- 
press or pine — evergreens are emblems of immortality, 
and monthly roses speak of the Resurrection. Then it 
is well to keep the grass closely cut, and the weeds out al- 
together, for they are as much in the way in this garden 
of the Lord, where he watches the dust of his saints, as 
they can be among the vegetables. Up in old Cam- 
bridge, the graveyard was close by the "Old White 
Meeting-house," and on the Sabbath-day, during the in- 
termission, it was common for the people — men, women, 
and children — to walk among the graves, families gather- 
ing around their own dead, and conversing with their 
neighbors of the departed. It was even in childhood an 
offense to me that Mr. Beebe would let his sheep run in the 
graveyard, but I was told he did so to keep the grass down. 

On the continent of Europe and in England the rural 



THE NEGLECTED GRAVEYARD. 287 

graveyards are better cared for than with us. I wandered 
into them in many countries, particularly in Wales, Ger- 
many, and Switzerland, and I do not recollect of seeing 
them any where so utterly neglected as some are here 
in Westchester County, in the focus of American civil- 
ization, wealth, and culture. 

We do not have the yew-tree here as in England. 
There they grow to a great size, as in Stoke, where Gray 
lies buried in the country church-yard. That was the 
scene and theme of his elegy — a poem that has furnished 
more lines that have become familiar to mankind than 
any other poem of equal length. The third stanza is — 

"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 
Each in his narrow cell forever laid, 

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." 

The sixth stanza is very fine : 

" For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
No busy housewife ply her evening care, 
No children run to lisp their sire's return, 
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share." 

The last line of the ninth verse is often quoted : 
" The boast of heraljjry, the pomp of power, 

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave. 
Await alike th' inevitable hour : 
The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 

And as I was walking recently in that desolate rural 
field of graves, another stanza of this elegy seemed very 
appropriate : 

" Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire ; 
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed. 
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre." 



265- UNDER THE TREES. 

And then follows the most familiar verse, quoted oft- 
ener than any other : 

" Full many a gem of purest ray serene 

The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear ; 
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 

In that country church-yard which Gray calls a " neg- 
lected spot," the poet was buried by the side of his moth- 
er, to whom he had erected a monument there. But the 
quiet beauty of that long, low church in the midst of those 
graves has lingered with me these ten years or more, and 
the signs of neglect, if there were any, have been for- 
gotten. 



XXVII. 

WHENCE COMFORT COMES. 

In the gray of the cold winter morning, the earth cov- 
ered with its winding-sheet of snow, I was standing on 
the front step, and a soHtary hearse came through the 
lane from my nearest neighbor's house, and passed the 
door. It was the saddest sight that had yet darkened 
my view. I knew what it was bearing away : the lifeless 
form of a lovely girl who, but a few days ago, was the life 
and joy of our little neigliborhood. Taking cold, she was 
suddenly thrown into a fever, and now, after a week's 
sickness, was dead. Of all the children around us, she 
was the one who bid the fairest to live. Full of health 
and spirits, rosy and buoyant, she was the pride and sun- 
shine of home and friends. She was as good as she was 
beautiful. Seeing her almost daily, we had never seen or 
heard what we wished otherwise. It is rare, indeed, that 
we can say so much as that, even of our own children, to 
whose faults parents are often blind. Yet this dear child, 
so fondly loved at home that the love of others is not to 
be thought of, was now dead. 

The hearse was taking her away, and, joining the smit- 
ten household, we followed with the remains to the city, 
and to the house of God where the burial-service was 
read, and then to Greenwood, where we laid her down 
beneath the snow and the winter clods, till the spring- 
time of the Resurrection, when she shall rise again 

T 



zgo UNDER THE TREES. 

with angelic beauty, and clothed with garments of im- 
mortality. ^ 

Now I do not know what there is outside of the Gospel 
of Christ to sustain and comfort a bleeding heart in such 
a sorrow as this. To our unaided reason, the blow that 
crushes parental hopes by such a sudden and appalling 
affliction is terrible and cruel. And why is a child per- 
rriitted to live and develop into lovely girlhood, and win 
the affection of friends, and taste the joys of young life 
that knows no care, and look out on the future with every 
prospect of giving and receiving pleasure with increasing 
enjoyment as years increase, to be thus early blighte^, 
smitten, slain, buried, lost, gone forever from our arms and 
sight and hearing, laid in the earth, to be enjoyed, to en- 
joy no more ? 

If there be no truth in the doctrine of our holy religion, 
this event is simply a horrible disaster, against which rea- 
son revolts, and philosophy furnishes no antidote. But 
the Gospel comes with a voice of tender consolation, and 
gives the sweet assurance that even such a sorrow is not 
without its own strong relief. Much of what has been 
said in sermons and books by way of consolation to the 
afflicted is drawn more from reason than from Scripture, 
and therefore fails to satisfy the aching heart of sorrow. 
The peace of God flows into the soul only by his Spirit 
through the. Word of truth. All that teaching which mag- 
nifies the blessedness of the departed, and would persuade 
us to be content because the one we love is better off than 
here, is well enough for those who can not take higher and 
broader views of the wonderful works of Him who doeth 
all things according to the counsel of his own will, and 
therefore must do them all well. It is a source of com- 
fort to a mourning mother to follow with the eye of faith 



WHENCE COMFORT COMES. 29 1 

her buried babe, as it rises into the form of an infant an- 
gel, and enters upon the praises of the heavenly state — 
a redeemed and holy child among the redeemed and holy. 
But this is only the comfort of compensation. There is 
higher and better solace than this in the doctrine of the 
good Word. And when the hand of God presses us 
heavily — takes away our treasures, health, wealth, friends 
— strips us of all that we love in life — puts bitterness into 
the cUp we are most fond of drinking — spreads a pall over 
the nursery, and hangs the fireside with black, and makes 
the house solitary and cold and dreary, that was last week 
vocal with songs and shouts of young gladness and health, 
and turns all our joy into mourning, our beauty to ashes, 
and our home light to darkness — then comes the message 
of the Gospel to the stricken soul, with its words of heal- 
ing, saving power. Afflictions come from the love of our 
Father in heaven. He pitieth us. He remembereth our 
frame. He is kind in his dealings and infinite in his wis- 
dom, knowing what is best for us and his kingdom. What 
we know not now, we shall know hereafter. It is good to 
be afflicted. We are to be made perfect through suffer- 
ing. He does with us as with children whom he loves. 
And this affliction will work out glory. I hear that sweet 
voice, which gave words to a soul of infinite tenderness, 
saying, " Let not your heart be troubled." I do not feel 
ashamed to weep, for my Lord and Pattern, my Priest and 
King, once stood by the side of a grave in a country vil- 
lage, and there wept over a friend that he loved. And so 
because he wept, I will weep also when death takes away 
those whom my soul loves. And because he said, in the 
midst of mortal agony, " Not my will but thine be done," 
therefore will I bow down under the weight of the heavi- 
est load that he in his holy wisdom and mercy lays upon 



292 UNDER THE TREES. 

me, and sinking into the great depths of humSn woe, I 
will cry, " Even so, Master and Saviour, not as I will, but 
as thou wilt." 

To believe in God is to get the victory over death — our 
own or of those dear to us. It is not Christ-like nor 
Christian, it is sinful and worse, to give way to unbelief, to 
repining, or to unconsoled grief. One joy is gone, but 
other joys remain. Duty to the dead is no longer re- 
quired, but duty to the living is increased. As our grief 
was the greatest, so our comfort in believing was through 
grace the greatest, that we might be the minister of con- 
solation to those around us in the same sorrow. 

" Oh, let my trembling soul be still. 

While darkness veils this mortal eye, 

And wait thy wise, thy holy will, 
Wrapped yet in tears and mystery. 

I can not. Lord, thy purpose see ; 

Yet all is well, since ruled by thee. 

"Thus trusting in thy love, I tread 

The narrow path of duty on; 
What though some cherished joys are fled ? 

What though some flattering dreams are gone ? 
Yet purer, brighter joys remain: 
Why should my spirit then complain ?" 

An aged minister, under the snows of more than sev- 
enty winters, having just buried the wife of his youth, 
wrote to me in his sorrow.- One of the strangest but not 
the most thankless of the works to which we are often 
called is the ministry of consolation. But the poorest of 
all comforts in sorrow is human sympathy. It seems a 
sacrilege and offense to say so ; yet what can it do to 
mitigate grief or bring back joy to a desolate spirit ? Still 
we love it, and seek it, and find it, and weep on. I wrote 
to the weary and smitten old pilgrim words like these : 



WHENCE COMFORT COMES. 293 

" Were you young and thus bereaved, I would find oth- 
er consolations than such as I bring you now. The days 
of your years are so far spent that, in the ordinary course 
of things, it will not be long ere you are again with her to 
renew your youth, immortal in union and love. It is, 
therefore, of no great moment whether you suffer or not, 
for at most it can not be very long, and then your joy 
will be forever. 

" And if you have already attained to some good de- 
gree of union with God by love, so that you have learned 
to live for others more than yourself, you have thanked 
him several times, since your wife's departure, that you 
were permitted to live until her life on earth was finished. 
It was meet that she should die first. She leaned upon 
you even when you trembled with age. It is sad to be 
left alone in this world, all the friends of one's youth long 
since fallen asleep, and then at last the companion of 
half a century — whose arm has been a support, whose 
bosom a pillow, whose smile dearer than the sun, whose 
voice the sweetest music, and whose love a life-long joy — 
to pass away. It were better that she should go befor^ 
you than for her to be thus left alone. 

" And now the memory of a lifetime, like a meadow 
stream, flows along through your soul, with sweet, bright 
flowers on either bank : the sunny days, when you whis- 
pered softly in her ear the old, old story, and won her for 
your bride. Often in the daytime these scenes recur 
with tender beauty to the eye of your spirit ; but mostly 
when the shades of twilight gather, and you sit, slippered 
and gowned, for a solitary evening by your one-sided 
hearthstone, then 

" ' Fond memory brings the light 
Of other days around thee,' 



294 UNDER THE TREES, 

and you revel in the recollections of youth and life 
and love, long time ago. Now you know how better 
far it is to have loved and lost, than not to have loved 
at all. 

" And that leads me to observe it is only in a very re- 
stricted sense we can say that we have lost our departed 
friends. Thirty-six years ago a friend, who had just been 
bereaved as you are now, asked me for a single line to 
put on the tombstone of his wife. I gave him — 

"'NOT LOST, BUT GONE BEFORE.' 

supposing it was original; but long before that time the 
poet Rogers had said it in lines that just meet your pres- 
ent want : 

" ' Those that he loved so long and sees no more. 
Loved and still loves — not dead — but gone before, 
He gathers round him.' 

And on the tombstone of Mary Angell, at Stepney, En- 
gland, "who died in 1694, the very line is written which I 
gave to my friend as an original in 1838. He put it upon 
^ slab which still stands in the church-yard at Fishkill on 
the Hudson River ; and he who placed it there has since 
been laid by the side of her who had ' gone before ;' and 
he has found, in the glad life beyond the grave, that his 
wife's epitaph is true. The same enjoyment waits on 
you in that other state. 

" A very thin partition, a veil almost transparent, sepa- 
rates you from her. It is a divine and wise arrangement 
that in the body our intercourse with human souls shall 
be through our senses only ; and this makes the veil im- 
penetrable, separating us from those gone before. They 
can not speak to us, nor we to them. But they may be 
near us always, and in ways unknown may be our minis- 



WHENCE COMFORT COMES. 295 

ters. Never mind how it is. Sufficient for us that they 
are blessed, and we 

" ' Soon their blessedness shall see.' 

" For if they sleep in Jesus, they shall awake in him ; and 
we, being in God by love, and one with them and him by 
love, shall be one with each other when those who sleep 
in Jesus are brought with him. Blessed are the dead 
who die in the Lord. , The early Christians had a deeper 
consciousness of this union than we have. The epitaphs 
on the tombs in the Catacombs of Rome, and the inscrip- 
tions on the old memorial marbles dug up from the re- 
pose of eighteen centuries, tell ug that they had peace un- 
speakable in the thought that saints die in the Lord, rest 
in him, sleep in Jesus, are by death born into new life 
with God. 

" ' We a little longer wait, 
But how little, none can tell.' 

"Be patient, and tarry till the Master calleth for thee. 
All the days of my^ appointed time will I wait until my 
change come. This is the fruit you are to bring forth in 
old age. The out-of-door work of life is for the younger, 
who are strong. Yours is to set an example of cheerful 
content, in the day when those who look out of the win- 
dows are darkened and all the daughters of music are 
brought low. Be not like the bird that beats her breast 
against the bars of her cage and pants to be free. But 
like one who sits all day long and sings, glad to go, yet 
content to stay. And when the door is opened, step out 
and fly away. The bride of thy youth, in whiter vest- 
ments than she wore on the day of her espousal, waits 
for thee. Infant voices cry, ' Come, father, come.' And 
He whose smile lights the universe with love, greets thee 



296 UNDER THE TREES. 

on the threshold of glory with those words (Oh, God ! 
that we might hear them now) : ' Enter thou into the joy 
of thy Lord.'" 

The cup that Jesus took from the hand of his Father 
was one of sorrow. This expression — the cup — is often 
used in the Sacred Writings for that which the cup con- 
tains. It may be of thanksgiving, of salvation, of joy, or 
of sorrow. It is even used to hold^the displeasure of the 
Father, whose wrath is sent upon the children of diso- 
bedience. This is the bitterest cup. It is often de- 
served. But we are not always, nor often, to infer that 
the cup of sorrow is givgn to us because the Giver is an- 
gry. It may be in great pity, with infinite tenderness, 
and with a view to our highest good. Now no chasten- 
ing is for the present joyous. The cup comes from the 
Father. The judge "in Eastern countries and ancient 
times condemned the criminal to drink the poisoned 
(fraught — a mode of punishment, of execution — and the 
condemned took the cup and drank it, and perished. But 
what father, if his son asked bread, would give him a ser- 
pent .'' or water, and would give him poison ? If my Fa- 
ther give me the cup, I know it is not the hemlock of 
which Socrates drank and died. It may be a very bitter 
cup. Medicine is not always pleasing to the taste. But 
it may be very important that you take it, nevertheless. 
And if my Father tell me it is better for me to drink it, 
bitter as it may be, my confidence in him is perfect, and 
I will drink it to the last drop in the cup. You have 
seen children do so a hundred times. And you have 
seen them rebellious, and refuse to take it, and fight 
against it, and sometimes they must be held firmly and 
actually made to drink the unpalatable draught. It does 



WHENCE COMFORT COMES. 297 

not do them half as much good as it would if they re- 
ceived it willingly and drank it cheerfully. And I have 
found it just so with every cup of sorrow that my Father 
has put to my lips. If I resisted, and refused to admit 
that there was any need of it, and felt offended that it 
was pressed upon me, insisting that I knew what was 
good for me, and did not require the proffered medicine, 
and would be actually better off without it — the cup was 
forced upon me by the higher will of my Father, and not 
until my will was subdued, and the cup received as a 
good child receives it, was it good for me to be afflicted. 
Then, in the dust and depths, with a crushed and melted 
heart, have I felt the infinite love of the Father, who does 
not willingly afflict, who never lays upon us more than we 
are able to bear, who is himself afflicted in all our afflic- 
tion, who bore our sorrows, who became a man of sor- 
rows, who knows every one of our griefs because he took 
upon him our nature, and therefore knows just what to 
put into the cup ; and he will not add a drop of bitter 
more than his unfathomable pity knows that we should 
drink. 

I know that the cup comes from his hand to mine ; and 
he is not only my Father, but my Heavenly Father; 
therefore too wise to err, too good to be unkind ; -infinite 
in his wisdom, goodness, and truth. And oh ! so tender, 
so loving, so full of all compassion ; he holds worlds in 
his hand, but he would not suffer a hair to fall from the 
head of one of his little ones unnumbered. His tender 
mercies are over all his works. If one we love is sick, 
with what gentle care we minister to every want ; how 
tenderly we lift from the pillow the fevered head, and 
hold the cup with cooling draught to the parched lips we 
have so often kissed. Like as a father pitieth his chil- 



298 UNDER THE TREES. 

dren, so the Lord pities us, his poor, weak, sick, suffering 
little ones. He holds our aching heads, heals our bleed- 
ing hearts, leadeth us into green pastures by still waters, 
and (blessed be his name) restoreth our souls. 

And shall I not drink it ? The cup- that my Father 
hath given me ! It is he who has raised up my head 
from this hot pillow ; I feel his soft hand upholding me ; 
my lips touch the cup, but his hand is putting it there, , 
and I hear his voice speaking soft and low into my soul, 
and saying : " Fear not, for I am with thee ; be not dis- 
mayed, for I am thy God." 

Yes, I will drink it, all of it. For as oft as I drink of 
this cup, I take the draught that my Father gives, and 
drink of the cup from which my Saviour drank. His 
was a cup of agony unspeakable. It was a cup of blood. 
I do not wonder he prayed — " If it be possible, let this 
cup pass from me." He did not love the taste. His 
soul was exceeding sorrowful. But he drank it all. What 
a privilege to drink out of the same cup with him ! To 
be baptized with his baptism. To be a partaker of his 
sufferings. And if we suffer with him, we shall also reign 
with him. , 

Give me, then, the cup, my Father ; hold it to my lips 
till I have drank so much as thy will directs. The cup 
that mypFather hath given me, shall I not drink it ? 



XXVIII. 

MY FIRST AND LAST GREAT SERMON. 

I HAD never preached in Princeton. Often invited, it 
was easy to make an excuse, while the real one was the 
reluctance, not unusual with young preachers, to appear 
as a teacher of teachers. To preach in Princeton in- 
volved the necessity of being heard by the venerable and 
learned . professors in the theological seminary and col- 
lege, and the still more critical audience of embryo divines 
and philosophers in those institutions. But in the year 
1849, being Secretary of the American Bible Society, I 
was requested to visit Princeton and "present the cause." 
As this was in the line of duty, I made the engagement 
at once, and commenced the preparation of a "great 
sermon." 

Taking the best one of several discourses already pre- 
pared on the special topic, I determined to load it with 
all the lore within reach, and to astonish the scholars of 
Princeton by my familiarity with the original Scriptures. 
My text and introduction were in these or similar words : 

"The 19th Psalm, 4th verse : 'Their line is gone out 
through all the earth, and their words to the end of the 
world.' 

" Beautiful as this passage is in our translation, it is far 
from giving the force and grandeur of the original. 

" If you consult the marginal reading, you will see that 
the word here rendered line is a rule or direction. 



300 UNDER THE TREES. 

" If you turn to the Septuagint, you will find that the 
word is sound: their voice has gone out," etc. 

"But go to the original Hebrew, in which this poem 
was written, and there the word li7ie is a string, a cord, a 
harpstring, and the idea is that the heavens are a great 
harp, the cord of which is stretched from sky to sky, 
making music to celebrate the glory of God." 

With this introduction, and a discourse to match, I went 
to Princeton, taking no other sermon with me, but armed 
with a serene consciousness that my first effort there 
would not be altogether unworthy of the place and oc- 
casion. The Rev. Dr. Schenck was pastor of the church, 
then, as now, a valued friend. With him I lodged, and as 
we were conversing upon the subject, I asked him to take 
down his Hebrew Bible and Septuagint, and listen to the 
introduction of my sermon. He heard it, expressed his 
satisfaction, and kindly admitted that he had not com- 
pared the readings before. It was arranged that the Rev. 
Dr. James W. Alexander, then in the noonday splendor 
of his rhetorical power, should preach in the morning, 
and all the congregations and institutions should be 
assembled in the evening, when the Secretary should 
"present the cause." 

I modestly declined to go into the pulpit. Dr. Alex- 
ander, after an invocation, announced to be sung the 
19th Psalm, first part. I said to myself, "I intended to 
sing that." Then he read as the morning lesson the 
19th Psalm. I began to be anxious, as I expected to 
read that. Then he gave for the second singing, 19th 
Psalm, second part. My anxiety now suggested perspi- 
ration. With intense suspense I waited a few minutes, 
and the eloquent doctor rose for the sermon and thus 
began : 



MY FIRST AND LAST GREAT SERMON. 30I 

"The 19th Psalm, 4th verse : 'Their line is gone out 
through all the earth,' " etc. 

" Beautiful as this passage is in the vernacular, it is far 
below the grandeur of the original. In the margin you 
will observe that the word here rendered line is rule or 
direction. In the Septuagint it is sound — and their voice 
is gone forth. But in the original Hebrew the word line 
is a string, a cord, a harpstring, and the figure of the in- 
spired poet is that the heavens are a great harp, swept by 
the hand of the Almighty and celebrating his praise." 

And then, with a wealth of illustration, fertility of im- 
agination, depth and extent of learning, in the blaze of 
which my poor little bantling wilted and perished, he went 
on to celebrate the excellences of the Scriptures, their 
majesty, variety, wisdom, power, and glory, and all this 
with an ease that showed what he was saying to be only 
the efflorescence of his knowledge, whose fruit and root 
and richness were scarcely called into use to make this 
magnificent discourse. Fancy my feelings when I heard 
every thing I had thought worth saying a thousand times 
better said, and on the top of it all such profusion of 
learning and copious streams of eloquence that my la- 
bored dissertation appeared tame and insipid. At last, 
to my great relief, he stopped. 

Before he left the pulpit, Dr. Schenck said to him : 
"You have used up the Secretary." 

" Why, what do you mean by that ?" 

" He read to me this morning the introduction to his 
sermon for the evening, and you have preached it." 

Dr. A. came down from the pulpit, and taking me by 
the hand, his fine face hiding and revealing a quizzical 
smile, he said, " You did not put all your eggs into one 
basket, did you ?" 



302 UNDER THE TREES. 

" Yes, I did," said I with a groan, " and you have put 
your foot into it." 

Yes, he had. My " great " sermon had proved to be a 
small one, and of course, great or small, was not available 
for the evening. What did I do? It's of very little mo- 
ment what I did, but I took the lesson severely to heart, 
was punished and mortified. In the evening the house 
was thronged in every part. The divinity students in one 
gallery, the collegians in the other, all the faculties of 
both institutions, pastors and people were before me — the 
most intellectual audience I had ever addressed. I "pre- 
sented the cause " as well as I could. 

That was my first and last "great sermon." And I 
didn't preach that. The lesson needs no enforcement, 
but young preachers will easily see the moral of it. 

Some seven years before that adventure I was wander- 
ing in New England in a summer vacation. On Satur- 
day afternoon I stopped at Andover, Mass., where I did 
not know a person. A country inn received me, and 
soon the Rev. Bela B. Edwards, D.D., found me, and with 
gentle force drew me to his house, where I spent one of 
the most delicious Sabbaths that earth ever yielded to 
me, or will. What peace, what grace, what chaste refine- 
ment in that home. Mrs. Edwards was the fitting com- 
plement of that accomplished man. 

In morning worship he used the Hebrew Bible, and 
read the 19th Psalm, translating as he read. In the 4th 
verse he said, "Their cord has gone out." 

" What's that ?" I said. " That is new to me." 

He read again — " Their cord, string, harpstring ;" and 
then we pursued the word through various languages, and 
I went away the next day wiser than I came. 

The learning which I had picked up so casually at 



MY FIRST AND LAST GREAT SERMON. 303 

Andover I attempted seven years afterward to discharge 
upon Princeton. ; but, alas ! they knew it all before I 
arrived. 

How charming the memories of those men whose 
friendship and love are more precious than gold or ru-- 
bies. Heaven has them now, but we will walk and talk 
with them yet again by the river side. We shall know 
more than books can teach us ; and when we sing the 
new song, the harps of the stars will be silent, but the 
melody will be sweeter, and the music the voices of angels 
only, and the ransomed of the Lord. 

" Oh, may I bear some humble part 
In that immortal song ; j 

Wonder and love shall tune my heart, 
And joy command my tongue." 



XXIX. 

THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER. 

I CAN not imagine any thing in nature more lovely 
than the scene that lies around and above me. It is a 
warm day — very warm. Out in the sunshine it is hot, 
and in the city it is an oppressive day. But I will tell 
you how the land lies about the trees under which I am 
writing, and you shall then have some idea of what a 
summer has just closed. 

Last year I built a rustic sofa: built it with my own 
hands, to the profound astonishment of friends who had 
given me no credit for hammer-and-saw skill, and were 
quite unwilling to believe that I could get up a fancy set- 
tee of this sort. But here it stands the second season, as 
good as new, and likely to do duty many more ; and I am 
stretched on this seat, with pencil and paper, a strong 
south wind moving among the trees that hang over me in 
thick shadow, the atmosphere fragrant with flowers that 
skirt the hedge rows, and the river glistening through the 
leaves like a crystal sea, while the trees and shrubbery, 
the grass and vines, washed clean with the late rains, 
seem to laugh in their beauty, looking so 'fresh and sweet 
as if this were nature's holiday, and every leaf and blade 
and shrub and plant were on a frolic, to be glad while 
they may. 

A friend near me this morning had remarked, " Noth- 
ing but heaven can be more beautiful ;" and the thought 



THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER. 305 

carried me away to the glory of an everlasting summer 
— the life-time day in heaven ; and I have been thinking 
while lying here of the scene that must break upon the 
eye when it first opens in the celestial paradise. 

" There, on a high, majestic throne, 

The Almighty Father reigns, 
And sheds his glorious goodness down 

On all the blissful plains. 
Bright like the sun the Saviour sits. 

And spreads eternal noon; 
No evenings there, nor gloomy nights, 

To want the feeble moon. 
Amid those ever-shining skies, 

Behold the sacred dove ; 
While banished sin and sorrow flies 

From all the realms of love." 

I love this present world ; God has made it all good — 

" Oh earth ! thy splendor and thy beauty how amazing ; 
Whene'er, anew, I turn to thee intently gazing, 
With rapture I exclaim. How beautiful thou art, 
How beautiful !" 

Then I look away from it and cry out, so that the birds 
in the branches overhead pause in their songs to listen 
while I sing : 

" Oh, if now so great the glory 

In the heavens and earth we see, 
What delight and joy forever. 
Near His throne and heart to be !" 

And then, changing the metre and the tune to one 
more stately but not less jubilant, when an oriole had 
finished his song, I began again : 

" Descend from heaven, immortal Dove ! 
Stoop down and take us on thy wings, 
And mount and bear us far above 
The reach of these inferior things : 

u 



306 UNDER THE TREES. 

Beyond, beyond this lower sky, 

Up where eternal ages roll, 

Where solid pleasures never die, 

And fruits immortal feast the soul. 

Oh for a sight, a pleasing sight. 

Of our Almighty Father's throne ! 

There sits our Saviour, crowned with light, 

Clothed in a body like our own ; 

Adoring saints around him stand, 

And thrones and powers before him fall : 

The God shines gracious through the man, 

And sheds sweet glories on them all. 

Oh ! what amazing joys they feel. 

While to their golden harps they sing, 

And sit on every heavenly hill. 

And spread the triumphs of their King !" 

We form our conceptions of the heavenly world from 
the descriptions of it briefly given in the Revelation, and 
by combining all the ideas of beauty which earth affords 
to aid us. The old poets, more indeed than the modern, 
delighted in the sensuous when they would paint the 
beauties of paradise, the finest of all of them being the 

" Oh, Mother dear, Jerusalem," 
which I love to repeat, but can not write out on these 
flying leaves. I recall from Watts a stanza scarcely 
less realistic in its imagery than any thing in Dickson's 
" Hymn of Heaven :" 

" Oh ! the transporting, rapturous scene 
That rises on my sight ; 
Sweet fields arrayed in living green, 
And rivers of delight." 

[Just the scene around me now.] 

" There, generous fruits that tiever fail, 
On trees immortal grow; 
There, rocks and hills and brooks and vales 
With milk and honey flow." 



THE. LAST DAY OF SUMMER. 307 

And there is another stanza that comes in so fittingly 
with this bright day and these joyous scenes : 

" There, all the heavenly hosts are seen, 
In shining ranks they move, 
And drink immortal vigor in, 
With wonder and with love." 

Running water is one of the most common images in 
the poet's fancy when singing of heaven — 

"There the Lamb, our Shepherd leads us, 
By the streams of life along ; 
On the freshest pastures feeds us. 
Turns our sighing into song." 

All those illustrations come from the twenty - third 
Psalm — the Shepherd, the water, and the pastures. And 
John says : " He showed me a pure river of water of life, 
clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and 
of the Lamb." 

" This stream doth water Paradise, 
It makes the angels sing; 
One cordial drop revives my heart, 
Hence all my joys do spring." 

"The Lamb is the light thereof." I have seen a pict- 
ure in which a temple is lighted up by rays of light pro- 
ceeding from the person of the Saviour — he is the Sun — 
they have no need of any other — 

"That clime is not like this dull clime of ours — 
All, all is brightness there; 
A sweeter influence breathes around its flowers, 

And a far milder air. 
No calm below is like that calm above. 
No region here is like that realm of love ; 
Earth's softest spring ne'er shed so soft a light, 
Earth's brightest summer never shone so bright ; 



3o8 UNDER THE TREES. 

One everlasting stretch of azure pours 
Its stainless splendor o'er those sinless shores ; 
For there Jehovah shines with heavenly ray,, 
There Jesus reigns dispensing endless day." 

Some people are often drawing contrasts between 
heaven and earth, not merely to the sad disparagement 
of the world they are living in, but to their own discom- 
fort : fretting themselves into discontent, while they are 
growing no better fitted for this life or that which is to 
come. A cheerful spirit is at once the privilege and 
the duty of every Christian to enjoy, and heaven has far 
more attractions to one who has a heart to enjoy the 
good and the beautiful here than to one who goes with 
his head like a bulrush, and grumbles all the way through 
the world. The fact is — and we may try to evade the 
truth if we will — that the greatest difference in the op- 
portunity of enjoyment between this world and heaven 
lies in the spirit that is in us, not in the circumstances 
around us. The soul is the man. Heaven reigns and 
shines, yes, and sings in the heart that is i-ight. Poverty, 
sickness, bereavement, anguish even on the rack or in 
the flames of martyrdom, can not make the man misera- 
ble. Laurentius, or, as we call him, St. Lawrence, suffered 
more than any martyr that I remember now. Instead 
of lying on a rustic sofa such 'as this on which I am 
stretched, with the balmy air of heaven breathing on me, 
and the warm sun hid by these trembling leaves, and 
the birds and bees and flowers singing their hymns, he 
was laid out on a large gridiron over a slow fire j and 
when he had been there for some time, he called out to 
the Roman emperor, who was looking on while the saint 
was broiling, " I am done to a turn," or as the Latin has 
been rendered : 



THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER. 309 

"This side enough is toasted, 
Then turn me, tyrant, and eat ; 
And see whether raw or roasted, 
I am the better meat." 

And it seems to me that if a good man could take 
things so coolly while broiling on a gridiron, we may be 
quiet under the little trials that we endure while on our 
way to the heavenly rest. 



XXX. 

OUR FRIENDS IN HEAVEN. 

So many of my friends have recently. gone to heav^en, 
it is quite natural that thoughts of them and their sur- 
roundings should be frequent. And certainly they are 
very pleasant. If there were ever a time when religion 
and death and the life beyond were subjects of sad re- 
flection, to be indulged only as a duty, such a time has 
passed away. It is now as cheering and agreeable to 
think of friends (and the more loved in life the more 
pleasant) enjoying the pleasures of the heavenly state, as 
to hear from others traveling in foreign lands, rejoicing 
in scenes and associations that satisfy their longing de- 
sires. The wisest and best of Roman moralists and phi- 
losophers enjoyed such thoughts of their friends gone be- 
fore them into the unseen and eternal, and they antici- 
pated with fond emotions a blissful reunion and refresh- 
ment in the society of the great and good. And with 
life and immortality brought to light by Revelation, what 
was to those ancient pagans a dreamy speculation, scarce- 
ly worthy of being called a faith, is to us reality. Our 
faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
of things not seen. We have thus entered already upon 
the inheritance, so that we have the good of it and part 
of the glory, as the heir to a vast estate or a throne en- 
joys, long before he comes into possession, the reflected 
honors and pleasures awaiting him. 



OUR FRIENDS IN HEAVEN. 311 

Names and faces and forms of friends who have within 
the past year preceded me into their rest have been peo- 
pHng the cheerful chambers of memory this evening. It 
is a rough night outside, and the day has been a weary 
one ; but now a soft firelight fills the room, and the study 
lamp is shaded, so that the silence and shadows invite 
converse with the spiritual and unseen. And the depart- 
ed of the year have joined themselves with the many who 
finished their course before them, and are now in the 
midst of worship and feasts and friendship in the man- 
sions of the blessed. How pleasant their memories now ! 
How the heart gladdens with the remembrance of the 
joys on earth and the hopes of higher in heaven ! 

A very few years ago I had some friends at dinner with 
me — a larger number than are often gathered at my ta- 
ble ; but they were friends, valued friends, some of them 
very dear. It was a feast of fat things, and six hours 
flew away like so many moments, making an evening 
never to be forgotten here or hereafter. And of that 
dinner company, a score are now in another state than 
this — their bodies resting in the ground, their souls with 
God. Twenty of my companions, associates in business, 
in the Church, in public and private life, personal friends, 
eating and drinking with me in one company, and now 
all gone ! 

I stopped just here, and took out a sheet of paper on 
which is a diagram of the table and the seat that each one 
occupied, with his name written in it. The links of mem- 
ory are brightened, so that their voices, their pleasant- 
ries, their very words of wit and wisdom, sparkling and 
bright, come flashing and shining, as on that glad and 
genial evening. At my right was the stalwart Edgar of 
Belfast, and on my left the polished Dill of Derry; and 



312 UNDER THE TREES. 

just beyond was the elegant and eloquent Potts ; and 
next to him the courtly and splendid Bethune ; S. E. and 
R. C. and S. F. B, Morse, three years sundered by death, 
but reunited to be sundered never again ; and there was 
Krebs, himself a host, my companion in foreign travel, 
and a most delightful friend ; and Murray, " Kirwan," 
brightening the brightest with the humor of his native 
isle ; and Cooke, who was with me in Switzerland ; and 
that wonderful astronomer, Mitchell, who now looks down 
to study the stars ; and Hoge, with love like that of wom- 
an ; and my brother, Stevenson, and others as bright 
and good : a brilliant company ; an acquisition to the 
skies — stars all of them ; who finished their course with 
honor, and then entered into joy. It would seem that 
the earth could not spare all those men, and keep right 
on. But they are in fitting company, with the Lamb in 
the midst of them. 

" There is the throne of David, 
And there from toil released, 
The shout of them that triumph, 
The song of them that feast." 

And there is a younger company. All these were he- 
roes and prophets and kings, but the children who have 
gone up there are children always. Oh blessed thought ! 
They were with us long years ago, and they are in our 
hearts the same playful little ones they were when the 
Father of us all asked them to come to his house. And 
they are his children and our children forever. That lit- 
tle one to whom David said he should go, is still the child 
of David, not an infant of days, for there are no days nor 
nights in heaven, but the saint-child radiant in immortal 
beauty. 



OUR FRIENDS IN HEAVEN. 313 

" Oh ! when a mother meets on high 
The babe she lost in infancy, 
Hath she not, then, for pains and fears, 

The day of woe, the watchful night, 
For all her sorrows, all her tears, 

An overpayment of delight ?" 

Heaven's floor is covered with them. Of such is its king- 
dom. They have been going there — flying before they 
could walk, carried there by the angels — all these thou- 
sands of years. There, did I say? We do not know 
where the place is, nor what a place is for spirits to dwell 
in. They may be near us, around us, ministering spirits 
sent forth to do us good, to strengthen us. It would be 
good, doubtless better, to be with them where they are, 
and with Him who has them near his face. 



THE END. 



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With an Essay on his Life and Genius, by Abthub Mtjkpuy, Esq. Por- 
trait of Johnson. 2 vols., Svo, Cloth, $4 00. 

KINGLAKE'S CRIMEAN WAR. The Invasion of the Crimea, and an Ac- 
count of its Progress down to the Death of Lord Raglan. By Alexan- 
der William Kinglake. With Maps and Plans. Two Vols, ready. 
12mo, Cloth, $2 00 per vol. 

KINGSLEY'S WEST INDIES. At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies. 
By CuARLES Kingsley. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50. 

KRUMMACHER'S DAVID, KING OF ISRAEL. David, the King of Isra- 
el : a Portrait drawn from Bible History and the Book of Psalms. By 
Prkdekick William Krummaouer, D.D., Author of "Elijah tlie Tish- 
bite," &c. Translated under the express Sanction of the Author by the 
Rev. M. G. Easton, M.A. With a Letter from Dr. Krummacher to his 
American Readers, and a Portrait. 12mo, Cloth, $1 75. 

LAMB'S COMPLETE WORKS. The Works of Charles Lamb. Compris- 
ing his Letters, Poems, Essays of Elia, Essays npon Sliakspeare, Ho- 
garth, &c., and a Sketch of his Life, with the Final Memorials, by T. Noon 
Talfoued. Portrait. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, 13 00. 



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